The Crown of Fire

by Tony Abbott

  “For crying out loud, you two, ask them about the mural,” Papa Dean whispered. “I’ll scout around for killers.” He gave a spy-like nod to them and sauntered off around the lobby, pretending to examine the different sizes of packing envelopes.

  Good, thought Lily. We need protection, and we need to work.

  When the students climbed the ladders and started brushing the mural, at first with dry brushes, then with damp cloths, she began a casual chat with them.

  Darrell meanwhile found his mind drifting back to his and Lily’s strange time in the tower of Kizil Kule in Turkey and how, fearing discovery by Ebner and his goons, the two of them were mashed up together in a tiny place.

  Remembering it now, his chest hurt, partly because he could still feel that moment, partly because he was full of words impossible to say to her—at least when she was around. He’d liked Lily from before the tower, of course, way before that. Then—boom—she’d told him she was leaving to be with her parents. Not only that, they would all move to Siberia or Seattle or somewhere! She’d told him she wouldn’t just leave without warning him. Sure. That was good. But the thought of not doing this—doing this—anymore suddenly made it hard to breathe—

  “Can you?”

  He turned. Lily had asked him something.

  “Sorry, what?”

  She made a little face. “I can do this alone, you know, Dimitrios.”

  “No. Sorry. What did you say?”

  “I need a boost so I can see something in the mural up close. Ron says there’s something strange up there.”

  “Ron? Who’s Ron?”

  “Me,” said one of the students, with a little wave.

  “Why not just climb up the ladder?” Darrell asked.

  Ron shook his head. “Insurance or something. Our professor told us only we can be on the ladders. I mean, we can try to catch you if you fall”—one of the other students shook her head—“but I guess we can’t do that, either. Sorry, it’s a thing, you know?”

  Darrell guessed he did know. “Okay. Sure.” Giving his head a quick dog-shake to get the Turkish tower out of there, he wove his fingers together. Lily slipped her foot into his hands, put her own hands on his shoulders, and jumped up. Then, to get higher, she raised one foot to his shoulder, balanced herself for a moment, then lifted the other. He had to hold her by the ankles.

  Oh man, oh man . . .

  If Lily ignored Darrell’s hands—surprisingly strong hands that he mostly used to hold a tennis racket and bash a guitar—firmly clasped around her ankles, it was actually pretty comfortable standing on him.

  Or does that sound weird? I just mean that his shoulders are flat. Not bowed or anything. Just flat, like steps. But this is probably too much about his shoulders, so maybe I’ll just look at the painting.

  A square-foot area of the Ponce part of the mural was shaded with what looked like layer on layer of black, or maybe very dark brown, paint. It glistened under the glare of the lobby’s ceiling lights, and out of the entire panel it seemed the only part to resist the first round of cleaning.

  “Yeah, that’s the place,” Ron said, pointing. “Do you see it, too?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Tilt your head. Slowly.”

  “But not yourself,” said Darrell. “Slowly or otherwise.”

  Keeping herself upright, Lily looked more and more askance at the panel until the ceiling light seemed to flare off the dark patch. Suddenly there it was, a vague thickness in the midst of the rusty black. A shape. A figure hidden in the swirl of thick plaster and paint.

  “A bird?” she said to herself. “Darrell, one step closer.”

  He slid his feet across the floor until she was as close as could be without actually touching the mural. Yes. The swirl took the form of a flying bird, wings spread, its head in profile. The beak was long and curved, thornlike. It was a raven or a crow, and it was emerging out of the top of an open pouch or sack that Ponce was carrying. The more she stared at it, the more she realized that it wasn’t a real bird at all, which would be weird to keep in a bag anyway.

  No, it was an object made to look like a crow. Its wings were hinged and angular, dotted nearly invisibly with silver.

  “It’s a black bird, maybe made out of stone,” she said. “And it’s got rivets or jewels in it. Darrell . . .”

  He couldn’t, or at least didn’t, look up. “Yeah?”

  “The relic is Corvus.” She knew the word could refer to either a crow or a raven. A thing that pecks. Like, in fact, one thought that had been pecking at her for days, not leaving her alone. “Descend me now.”

  His hands slid, probably instinctively, up her calves, but she kicked them away. “Give me your hands.” He did. She reached down and held them tight, then jumped off his shoulders to the floor.

  Of all the things Darrell could actually have said when she landed, her face inches from his, he said, “And how do you know the relic is Corvus? What’s a Corvus?”

  “A crow. On the boat to Gibraltar, I memorized the names of the original forty-eight constellations recorded by Ptolemy.”

  “On the boat? You did that?”

  “I had three months!”

  “Thirteen days,” he murmured.

  “Besides, I do stuff when you’re not staring at me, you know.”

  She turned to the student named Ron. “Thanks a lot for that. I’m no expert on murals from nineteen forty, but I’d say that the reason you can’t get that part clean is because the artist didn’t want you to.”

  He looked at her quizzically. “Um . . . okay. Thanks.”

  When they stepped away, Papa Dean circled around to them. “Well?”

  “Corvus,” she said. “The crow. It’s one of the constellations. That’s Ponce de León’s relic. He must have brought it to Florida. It’s in his sack there in the mural, which I think is a clue to the Guardians. I don’t think it tells us where it is now, but it’s a start.”

  The old poet shook his head. “That typical Guardian thing. They only tell you enough to get you to the next step. Never the whole story.”

  “You should talk; you’re a Guardian,” Darrell said. “Anyway, look what I found.” He dragged them both over to a small plaque on the wall. “It says here Ponce de León was wounded by Native Americans and was taken by ship to Cuba. He died there.”

  Lily tried to understand. “Okay? It’s kind of like how Magellan died.”

  “Exactly,” Darrell said. “But here’s the thing. There’s a Ponce de León museum in Havana, Cuba, and it’s supposedly supposed to have the only artifacts belonging to him in the Western Hemisphere—which is where we are, but the plaque people aren’t sure, because Cuba’s been off-limits to Americans for decades.”

  “Cuba?” said Lily. “Are you saying we’re going out of the country again?”

  “Havana’s only ninety miles from the bottom of Florida,” Papa Dean said. “I can get you in under the radar. There’s supposed to be a pretty good Guardian in Havana. If she’s alive. Let’s get you to her. I know a friend of a friend who has a motor launch we can take out from the dock, pretend to fish all day, then slip over to Cuba at night. But look, your window of safety is small. As nonexistent as the Guardians are now, the Order is at the top of its game. We need to move. I’ll drive around to the rear entrance and come back in for you.” He trotted out the front.

  Darrell grinned. “Good job, Lil. Really good. We’re finally getting somewhere.”

  “Thanks. Look, give me a few minutes, will you?” she said. “Bathroom.”

  “I’ll stand guard out here,” Darrell said, so she headed down a corridor off the main lobby.

  She needed to be alone. It was too much, the constant presence of someone else staring at her. The idea that they were back in the US and were now going to leave it? She needed to let her thoughts breathe.

  Five minutes. That’s all I need to calm down and get this out of my system.

  She hoped she could just talk herself out of it, put
it away, and forget it because, after all, they were being hunted, and no matter how much Florida reminded her of home and of her parents, she had to be careful, so careful. . . .

  Then she saw the telephone just outside the restroom.

  The antique, wall-mounted, museum-old telephone.

  It must have been one of the last pay telephones in the world, and it was just hanging on the wall, waiting for her to use it. The clunky wire dangling from the headset to the black box. The heaviness of the headset when, despite herself, she slipped it from its cradle. She stared at the grille you speak into, the one you listen to.

  The phone was one they call a landline. A practically caveman invention. She wondered, Could this be the only phone in the world not tapped by the Order? The Order’s too slick and powerful to even think about this old technology, isn’t it?

  Old technology, sure. But unlike cell phones, it had only one job to do.

  Make a call.

  Her heart started to beat harder, numbers spinning in her head. Their new area code. No. I can’t. No. Then she found herself loading in as much change as she had in her bag and raised her finger to the dial. One. Seven. Three. Seven . . .

  A long minute later, trembling and sweating, she spoke into the phone.

  “Mom, Dad, it’s me.”

  The screaming on the other end sent chills down Lily’s spine.

  “Lily! Lily! Oh, my Lily!” her mother cried over and over. When her father took the phone, it was simple. “Sweetheart, where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you, but I’m safe. We’re safe.”

  “Lily, please,” her mother said, and the phone crackled twice.

  “I have to go! I love you!” She hung up.

  Stupid! Stupid! Of course, the Order is listening! They’re always everywhere, listening to everything. Omigod, what an idiot!

  She rushed back to the lobby without having gone to the bathroom. “We need to get out of here,” she said, trying to sound as if she didn’t just make a stupid phone call.

  Papa Dean rushed in through the back door. “Waiting for you outside. We’ll have you on your way to Havana tonight—”

  The screech of tires cut through the air. Several car doors slammed outside.

  “I knew it! My parents’ phone is tapped!” Lily blurted. “We have to go!”

  Darrell gasped. “Your parents? Lily, tell me you didn’t.”

  “It’s been so long—”

  Papa Dean nearly exploded. “That old phone? I knew it! This is exactly what I’m talking about! Kids doing Guardian work. Get in the car. Now!”

  They rushed out the rear to the street just as a pair of stone-faced, muscly agents in short sleeves stormed through the front door. Lily heard a ladder crash to the floor. The three of them dived into Dean’s taxi, and he tore away into the streets at high speed as a bullet thudded into the trunk of the cab.

  “Holy crow!” Dean shouted. He squeezed between a sedan and a bus and took a hard illegal left at the next intersection onto a wide boulevard. He slid into the flow of traffic, then raced up a ramp onto a highway.

  “Just what I’m talking about!” he shouted. “You know what, no Cuba for you. Not yet. You led the Order right to the clue and gave them the on-ramp to Cuba. If they didn’t know that Ponce was a Guardian, they sure do how. Novizhny? Amateurs!”

  He punched the accelerator to the floor.

  To Lily, seven tense days in Papa Dean’s closet-sized apartment at the end of a narrow, nondescript block in a neighborhood in South Miami were nearly as bad as that decade on the gangster hideout ship to Gibraltar. Darrell wasn’t speaking to her. Papa Dean wasn’t speaking to either of them. Seven days of tense silence were like being buried alive.

  Ha, she thought bitterly. I wanted to be alone? I got what I wanted!

  “Darrell,” she whispered, “talk to me—”

  There was a tap at the door. Papa Dean raised his finger to his lips and pulled a pistol out of a dresser drawer. He tiptoed to the door in bare feet. A small voice spoke behind it. Dean carefully opened the door. A boy of five or six stood there, wearing a T-shirt, red shorts, flip-flops. He had a buzz cut and was chewing gum slowly. He blinked at the gun.

  Dean lowered it. “Sam?”

  “It’s time, Padre,” he said.

  “Which pier?” said Papa Dean.

  “No pier. Not Miami. Key West. Pebble Street. Sundown. Tonight.” Sam held out his hand. Papa Dean put a one-dollar bill in it. Sam brushed his buzz cut back and waited.

  When Dean dug out a five-dollar bill, Sam smiled, snatched the bill, popped his gum, and disappeared down the corridor.

  Dean grabbed his car keys from an ashtray and slipped on a pair of driving moccasins. “It looks like we’re on our way.”

  Five minutes later, after packing a change of clothes in a waterproof backpack—all of which Dean had picked up over the previous days—they were out the door.

  Key West stands at the westernmost tip of a string of islands connected by a long slender causeway that curls out from the very bottom of Florida. One of the largest of the islands, Key West is also the nearest point in the US to Cuba. Crossing by boat would therefore take the shortest time. Lily sure hoped it would. Being cooped up with Papa Dean and Darrell and staying as silent as stone was like being in terminal detention.

  Four and a half roundabout hours after leaving Miami, they were driving into the dying sun. Papa Dean wove through the quaint lanes and passages, motoring finally down Pebble Street to the ramshackle docks on the southern side of the island, near what they called Low Beach, the southernmost point on the island.

  He parked in a small lot just up from the water.

  The little bungalows jammed next to one another on both sides of the street were probably charming in the daytime, Lily guessed, but at night in the deadly quiet, they seemed sinister, ghostly. A vintage motorboat was waiting for them at the end of a crooked wooden dock—vintage meaning “broken-down.” Dean spoke briefly with a man who had a pronounced limp. The man handed him some papers, laughed, shook his head, took an envelope from Dean, limped away. The salt breeze off the water was as hot as a clothes drier, even at night.

  “What was that all about?” Lily asked.

  Dean grumbled as he scanned the papers. “Good news, bad news.”

  “Give it to us,” Darrell said, and Lily noticed that it was the first time he’d said “us,” or much of anything, since her dumb phone call had nearly got them captured—or worse.

  “We got hold of the hourly logs of the Cuban shore patrol,” Dean said, “so now we know the safest time and place to land. That’s the good news.”

  Darrell stretched his neck. “Okay. And the bad?”

  “We have a boat, this one, but no pilot. You’ll have to motor across to Cuba yourself. I can’t go with you because of my thing.”

  “What thing?” asked Darrell.

  “But with these charts,” Dean continued, not answering, “you should be able to make it. I’ve marked the landing spot. Dog Cove, they call it. There’s a compass in the boat. If you head right to Dog Cove, cut the motor at a mile or so out. Then you can scuttle the boat and swim ashore without anyone shooting at you.”

  “Wait. Scuttle the boat?” said Lily. “Meaning . . .”

  Papa Dean snorted. “Meaning scuttle it. Make it sink! You won’t be using it again, and you don’t want any patrols finding it. But even after you scuttle it, your problems will only be starting. Russia’s a big player in Cuba, so the Red Brotherhood will be all over the place. Like I said, if the Order in Miami knows about you, the Red Brotherhood in Havana will, too. The way you led them to the mural, they’ll already have made the Ponce de León connection. Our only hope is that they don’t know who the current Guardian is. So if they don’t kill you on the beach, it’s because they need to follow you.”

  “We’ll deal,” said Lily, venturing a look at Darrell.

  “Final thing. I’ve done some digging. The chief Cuban Guardian is now ove
r a hundred years old. Here’s a map to her place. Memorize then destroy. The map, not the Guardian. Señora Vélaz. If she’s the same Señora Vélaz I knew, she’s a real crank.”

  Darrell stifled a laugh. “Seriously? You’re telling us that she’s a . . . never mind.”

  Dean wasn’t smiling. “I repeat, the Red Brotherhood will follow you, then kill you. Follow, then kill. If you want to live, you have to be as swift and ruthless as Galina now. Get in the boat and try not to sink it while you’re still in it. Go.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Havana, Cuba

  July 12

  4:17 a.m.

  The Red Brotherhood will follow you, then kill you.

  Darrell crouched at the front of the motorboat, remembering Papa Dean’s parting words. The orange haze over Havana’s harbor had been visible for two hours already, and they were finally close enough to distinguish individual lights. He scanned the shore west of the city. Altogether, it had been some six hours since they’d rowed the small boat away from Key West and got out far enough to start up the motor.

  Follow, then kill.

  Papa Dean hadn’t bothered to wave good-bye. That would have blown his cover as the grumpiest Guardian still alive.

  Now Darrell felt the same. Grumpy, angry with himself, sullen. The silence between him and Lily was eating him alive, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She had risked their lives. But they all had, at one time or another. He wanted to say, “Lily, okay, we’re fine,” but something stopped him. Maybe it was because the two of them were alone, not knowing if Wade and Becca were safe, to say nothing of his mother and stepfather, and he felt he and Lily had to be tougher than tough, had to step up, had to be Novizhny, and they couldn’t make mistakes anymore.

  Finally, though, over everything else, she was Lily, and they were alone together, and they were all they had.

  For the hundredth time, he opened his mouth to say something when suddenly, she did.

  “I’m so sorry, Darrell. It was dumb. I knew it. Darrell?”

  He forced himself to speak. “We have to find Cat Cove that Papa Dean showed us on his chart.”