A cabin boy scurried in, bringing dried cod and more water for Blaise. He ate with ferocity, ignoring the toughness of the salty fish, and drank the whole jug of water at once. It seemed a lifetime ago that he had sat in the comfort of the palace, being waited upon by the terrified Inko.
Patchy removed a yellowed nautical chart from a trunk and smoothed it out on the table, pulling a pair of dividers out of the drawer.
Mare Incantato was written in flowery lettering across the top, next to a painted compass rose, pointing north. Below these the chart showed a sea full of islands, islets, and rocks.
“Where do you want to go, Captain?” Patchy asked again, sweeping his hand across the chart. “To find sea snakes or unicorn fish?”
Holding up the jug for more water, Blaise said, “If it’s cool with you, I don’t want to look for sea snakes right now. I really want to find my friends, but I don’t know how.”
He got up and scrutinized the chart with Patchy, hoping it would show him some way of getting back to the palace, or at least the way out of the painting, but it showed him nothing.
Blaise touched the ivory paper, and something tugged at his brain. He dived into his messenger bag, snatching out the map he had scraped off the white wall.
He flattened it on top of the chart and cursed himself. The map wasn’t complete. In his haste he had left the top right-hand corner behind, still stuck to the wall.
The map showed islands and shoals, some with tropical vegetation and animals marked on them. The heads of fanged and spiked sea creatures popped out of the waters around the islands.
Blaise fingered the torn edge of the parchment. He had shorn off a piece of the northernmost island. Above the island were three drawings: a rectangle divided into four, with each quarter filled with smaller and smaller concentric squares; a woman holding a horn full of fruits and a wheel; and a woman with wings and a staff. Next to her was a fragment of another drawing that had been torn away.
“Do you know what they are?” Blaise asked Patchy.
The sailor shrugged. But he pointed at the island and grinned. Lifting up the map, he jabbed his finger at the nautical chart below it.
“Same same,” he announced.
Sure enough, the island was also on Patchy’s chart. It, too, was the last island at the top, but there were no drawings next to it.
“Where are we right now?”
Patchy ran his hand down the chart and pointed to an empty expanse of sea.
“We’re nowhere near that island,” Blaise said, looking again at the tiny drawings on his map. He had no idea who the two women were, but he was pretty sure about the divided rectangle.
It was just like the labyrinth in the Mariner’s Chamber.
“We go there, Captain?” The sailor measured the distance on his chart with the dividers.
Blaise furrowed his brow. Was it just a coincidence? Did he dare follow his hunch that the map had been left there for him, that his best way forward was to find the labyrinth — the way home?
“I guess so,” he said. “It’s somewhere to start, anyway.”
“Aye, sir.”
Blaise stashed the map back in his bag and followed Patchy out of his new quarters.
“Captain Doran,” said Blaise to himself, and couldn’t help but smile as he ducked his head through the low cabin doorway, emerging back on deck to survey the rows of straining oarsmen.
Angus’s shouts became curses as Blaise’s galley moved farther away.
“No one leaves me behind, least of all some idiotic boy!” he yelled. He stamped on the pier and dropped to his knees as it shifted suddenly beneath his feet, the wooden boards extending into an L shape.
When he got back on his feet, he saw a second galley ship coming across the water. Its wooden figurehead was Mercury, a young man with winged feet and a winged hat, holding a rod entwined with snakes.
Angus scrambled aboard as soon as it was tied up. A band of sailors greeted him as their captain, but he cut short their welcome.
“Captain — good,” Angus said. “Is this my reward for fighting off the monster hog and making it through the maze? I get my own transport, too?”
“Yes, yes,” said a gap-toothed sailor. “We take you where you want to go. We fight for you also!”
“Thank you, Raven, wherever you are,” muttered Angus to himself. “Very useful.”
He rushed to the stern of the ship and swung himself up onto the poop deck, from which he could see Blaise’s ship heading out into open sea.
Two sailors followed. “You give us orders, Captain. You want to fight the giant octopus? We know where to find it. Or the giant eel?”
“Fight a giant eel?” Angus frowned. “I’m not interested in sea monsters. I’m hunting a boy. He’s taken a map that should have been mine.”
The sailors nodded brightly at this.
“So here’s my first order, lads,” he bawled, pointing at the Venus. “Follow that ship!”
The crewmen scattered and took up their duties, shouting to the oarsmen. The ship turned and skimmed along the water’s surface while Angus hung over the side, never letting the Venus out of his sight. The sailors watched their new captain with the torn clothes and scratched face as he laughed and muttered to himself.
But then Blaise’s galley began to fade behind a ragged cloud of mist, and the Mercury slowed. Sailors called to each other in a rapid mix of tongues as they peered out to get a better view, while the ship’s pilot studied his compass and compared it to a dog-eared chart.
Angus pounded the railing with his fist. “Faster! Get moving!”
He scanned the gray shroud surrounding them. Something dark had moved in the distance — he was sure it had. But when he looked back, it had gone.
“Change course,” he commanded. “That way. They’ve gone that way!”
The helmsman glanced at the pilot, who returned a warning look.
“What’s the problem?” demanded Angus, hands on hips.
“That way’s no good, Captain,” the pilot said, frowning. “Rocks.”
Angus answered coldly, “You’ll have to be careful, then, won’t you?”
Sunni stumbled down the hill, her cries muffled by the thickening mist, calling for Blaise. He was nowhere to be seen. They reached the white wall, and Marin motioned for her to follow as he half carried Dean alongside it. When the whiteness gave way and opened to the sea, there was no sign of the pier Blaise and Angus had embarked from. Sunni collapsed onto her knees.
“Where did Blaise go? He must have come this way.”
Marin sat Dean down by her side. He took a swig from his water skin, then passed it to them.
“A ship came for the boy, and he is gone. And he was followed,” Marin said. “I saw the man for a moment only, running in the mist — the one you say you do not know.”
“We’re not liars. If we say we don’t know him, we don’t,” Sunni said. “So, now what? Do we just sit here?”
“Patience,” replied Marin. “Watch the sea.”
“You know where we are?”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence as the sunlight dazzled the water’s surface. A patch of fog drifted far out to sea.
Then Marin pointed at a ripple in the water. A pier pushed up through the surface and came to a standstill, as if it had always been there.
Marin hoisted Dean up and walked him along it, with Sunni close behind. As they reached the end, a galley with a warrior carved into the prow moved alongside them. The figurehead’s fearsome face and sword etched with dragons looked familiar.
“Mars again,” said Dean as the ship pulled in.
Marin called out something to the sailors. Two of them hauled Dean over the gangplank and sat him up on the poop deck. One of them tried to clean his leg wounds with a wet rag, but he recoiled and said, “Get off!”
Sunni huddled next to him, watching Marin tell the sailor at the helm, “There are two ships out there somewhere, captained by a man and a boy. Fin
d them.”
The Venus, too, had been caught in the fog bank. When at last it drifted out, there was no sign of land in any direction, nor any birds. And there was no sign of Angus.
In his quarters, Blaise flicked his sketchbook open to a blank page and drew the hunter and his crossbow from memory, then Hugo and Angus. He spent more time on a sketch of Sunni standing on the labyrinth’s center, her eyes closed. More drawings poured out of him, filling up page after page. In the white spaces, he wrote captions and made little diagrams.
When he finally stopped and leafed back through his work, a lump rose in his throat. If he didn’t make it, at least someone might find his sketchbook and keep it. Maybe they would even find his dad and give it to him. That might help him understand what Blaise had seen and done before he died in this place.
Angus drummed his hand against the railing of the Mercury, willing the oarsmen to catch up with Blaise’s galley.
“Too slow!” He threw his ruined overcoat onto the deck, glaring down at the master of the oarsmen, and turned to the pilot. “Make them go faster.”
“We must go slow in fog, Captain,” the pilot answered. “Until it is safe.”
“Well, when will that be?”
“I do not know.” The pilot pointed at his chart. “Cannot see the rocks here, Captain.”
Angus returned to the railing and swore at the mist. The echoing screeches of gulls drowned out the calls of the sailor in the crow’s nest. The mist thickened and clung to everything, making the sailors look like phantoms as they darted around.
Waves grew from light swells to rolling juggernauts that crashed over the sides and sent the sailors skidding along the decks. Angus clung to the railing, drenched and spitting seawater.
A sailor tried to pull him away. “Come below, Captain, or you’ll go overboard!”
“I give the orders,” snarled Angus, “and I’m not going anywhere.”
A towering wave drove over them and hit the ship with a thunderous slap. The sailor tumbled and was washed into the sea. Angus was spun across the deck and dashed against the opposite railing.
The Mercury righted itself long enough for the crew to get to their feet, then the stern suffered a massive blow. Horrendous screams came from above as the sailor in the crow’s nest plummeted to the deck. The surge rammed the ship forward into rocks, tearing its underside apart with a sickening grinding sound.
The air was a cacophony of sailors’ groans and splintering planks as the Mercury’s belly filled with water. The cloth canopy above the poop deck tumbled down, covering Angus, and the ship’s lantern crashed on top of it in a shower of sparks. He battled to throw off the heavy fabric as waves buffeted the ship.
Angus glanced behind him and saw a red glow. Flames were eating up the canopy, igniting the deck’s timbers. He clawed his way along on hands and knees until he found the edge of the cloth and flung it off.
He dived overboard and swam as far away from the broken ship as he could. Fog still hid everything, but he heard a sound nearby that he took to be waves smacking on stone. He paddled in its direction, his hands stretched before him, feeling for the shore.
The fog bank opened, revealing a pile of rocks. Angus floated forward and grabbed hold of the first rock he could. He hauled himself up, slipping over seaweed and barnacles to get to longer, flatter rocks. When he was high enough above the surf, he lay down on his back and closed his eyes, panting.
Suddenly he felt warmth on his face and his eyes snapped open. Sunlight was pushing the mists aside. But what he saw above him made him roll over and scramble away from where he had lain.
“Zut alors!”
Mercury’s wooden face stared down at him. The wrecked galley was wedged between boulders only meters away from him.
As the fog retreated, he saw flames engulfing the ship. The empty deck burned orange against the blue sky and sea, and soon all traces of mist vanished. Fire ran up the ship’s rigging, popping and cracking and sending ashes flying on the breeze. There was no sign of the crew.
Angus whirled around and scanned the empty horizon. “Shouldn’t a new ship be turning up for me about now, Raven? Or is it just one per customer?”
As if in answer, a rogue wave crashed over the Mercury and dragged it backward. The charred deck disappeared, followed by the flaming masts, until at last the prow was pulled down into the sea, the figurehead’s winged hat the last to be swallowed up.
“All right, you win this round.” Angus shook his fist at the sea. “But I’m not finished yet.”
Dean spat an olive pit onto the cabin floor and took a large mouthful of water offered by the ship’s boy.
“Those are too salty,” he said, grimacing. “Don’t you have anything else?”
The boy held out a basket of salted dried fish. “Oh, man, what is that? It stinks and looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
Marin did not look up from the chart he was studying at the table. “You are fortunate to have anything.”
“I don’t see you eating it.”
“If you do not eat, you will die and save me the trouble of keeping you alive.”
Dean glared at his captor’s back.
Marin called the ship’s boy over and said something to him. A few minutes later, he brought in a basket of hard biscuits.
Dean gnawed on one and banged it against the bunk he sat on. “It’s like a dog biscuit.”
Marin ignored him. Dean eyed the leather satchel at their captor’s feet. He would give anything to snatch his portrait from the bag and tear it up. But Marin kept it with him at all times.
“How come you know where everything is on this boat, Marin?” Sunni licked olive juice from her fingers. “You knew all about the predator maze and Hugo, too.”
“I have been in the maze many times and on countless ships in this ocean,” he answered without looking up. “I have met each sailor ten times before and eaten this food over and over again.”
“While you were spy hunting,” said Sunni.
“Yes.”
“So you just go round and round, chasing people who are probably completely innocent and even putting them inside drawings. What gives you the right to do that? What are you looking for, anyway?”
Marin slapped the chart with his palm. “My master is missing and with him some very important paintings. I must find him or at least protect the paintings from thieves. It is my duty.”
“Your master?”
“Yes,” said Marin. “Signor Fausto Corvo, artist of Venice.”
“Since when?” Sunni stopped chewing.
“Since I was ten.”
“So you’re his servant,” Dean said, grinding his biscuit against the hull.
“I am no servant. I am il Corvo’s apprentice! He was teaching me to be a painter.” Marin rose from the table. “He could not trust many people with the secrets of his work, but he trusted me.”
“Then why don’t you know where he is? Why didn’t he tell you?”
“I do not have to answer your questions.” Marin stalked out of the cabin.
“Yes, you do. My stepbrother and I were just trying to find our way home, and you kidnapped us,” Sunni said, scrambling to catch up with him. “Our parents must be out of their minds worrying about us, and we’re stuck here with you for no reason.”
“Yeah!” said Dean, limping behind them.
“Maybe you don’t mind being trapped here for four hundred years, but I do!” Sunni followed Marin onto the deck. “I want to go back to my time and carry on living my life.”
“I want to see my mom,” said Dean. “I want to see my stepdad. I want to see my friends. . . .”
“Me too.” Sunni threw her arms up. “There are so many things I want to do.”
“What can a girl do that matters?” The apprentice gazed out into the fog that surrounded the galley.
“Where do I even start?”
“For one thing, Sunni’s going to be an artist,” Dean piped up.
“Dean!”
Sunni hissed as she felt him tugging the zipper on her backpack.
“Show him your sketchbook.”
“He’s already seen it. I saw you looking at it back in the cave,” she said to Marin. “Leave it, Dean.”
“Give me the sketchbook.” Marin held out his hand. “I want to see it again.”
“I’ll hold it while you look at it, if you don’t mind.” She tossed her head.
Marin shrugged and watched Sunni leaf through her drawings. He laid his finger on one page. “You drew that one without help?”
She nodded, and he raised one eyebrow. “It is not bad — for a girl.”
Sunni flushed and felt like snapping the sketchbook shut.
“Sunni’s the best artist in her class,” Dean said. Sunni was not sure whether she wanted to hug him or kick him.
“A girl who draws,” Marin said. “Is there anything females cannot do in your century?”
“No.”
“It would be amusing to see how you would fare in my master’s workshop, preparing canvas for his paintings, mixing his pigments from dawn to dusk,” Marin said with a superior air.
“Is that what you did?”
“Yes.” He tapped another sketch. “Who are these people?”
“Friends from school. My father and stepmother,” she answered.
“You are this boy’s stepsister.”
“My father married his mother, yes. My mother died five years ago.”
“My mother is also dead,” said Marin. “The plague took her and the rest of my family.”
“Plague . . .” murmured Sunni. “How old were you?”
“Nine.” The soft look of sadness that passed across Marin’s face took her by surprise.
“So was I, when my mom died,” Sunni said in a low voice.
“Captain!” the sailor in the crow’s nest called. “The mist breaks. Another ship comes!”
The Mars emerged into clear skies and was confronted by another galley sailing in the opposite direction. Its carved figurehead was a melancholy lady holding a crescent moon, with an owl on her shoulder. Luna— the Moon.
The Blackhope Enigma Page 12