The ghoulish captain and the old sailor faced each other in the street, their armed men ready for battle at their backs. The marines firmly held their ground, but their fair faces hardly matched the cocked smiles and crazed eyes of the wild pirate bunch across from them, itching for a fight.
Jim watched all of this like a spectator at a boxing match until a raspy voice called attention to his presence.
“Well, well, Jim Morgan,” the King of Thieves muttered, slinking from a nearby shadow. “You had it in you after all! Well done, my boy, well done indeed. But it seems we find ourselves in a rather precarious predicament.” No sooner than the King of Thieves said this than every party involved in the fierce standoff noticed Jim’s arrival, and nearly a hundred heads turned at once to find him there, and nearly two hundred eyes lit up with recognition.
“Jim Morgan!” Captain Bartholomew Cromier set his icy cold sights on the boy, a sort of madness glittering in his blue eyes, fury glinting off the teeth in his wolfish growl. “You’ve caused me quite a bit of trouble since the last time we met.”
“Not nearly as much as you’ve caused me, you murderer!” Jim’s fingers and toes crackled with electricity, an angry heat blazing up from his chest, flushing his face a fierce red.
The captain, cheeks still as pale as the winter weather, grinned cleverly and turned to MacGuffy. “I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said, putting on the airs of a merciful noble. “I’ll do you a favor in exchange for a small token. You let me take the boy, to punish him for crimes against the crown, and I’ll leave your special little place alone for now, which I’m sure should be plenty enough time for your quick hands and feet to empty it of all its plunder.”
MacGuffy chuckled and his men laughed and chortled right along with him. “Well, that’s migh’y generous of ye, my liege.” MacGuffy arched his eyebrow high, staring fearlessly into the young captain’s face. “But as ye said earlier, we be pirates. And as a general rule, pirates don’ care too much to see anyone punished for crimes against the crown, sire. An’ it seems to me that the boy here is accusin’ ye of some crimes of your very own…and I find that more than a teensy curious, eh?”
Bartholomew bristled and, for the first time, visible even from where Jim stood by the door of the vault, the slightest tint of color touched his white cheeks. “I’m giving you a chance to walk away with your life, old man. What do you care for the boy? He’s a liar and a thief. Keep your treasure, keep your lives, keep your tongue in your mouth, and walk away.”
“I’m no liar!” Jim raged from where he stood, no longer caring that there was nowhere to run or nowhere left to hide. “I saw you with my own eyes! You killed Hudson and you helped kill my father!”
Now this got the pirate’s attention. MacGuffy’s teasing smile twitched with madness to match his glee. “It may come as a surprise to ye, captain,” MacGuffy said lowly, so low that Jim could barely hear. “But we are more than a bit familiar with the boy’s father - Lindsay Morgan was his name.”
Bartholomew Cromier’s face twisted into a cruel snarl, and he leaned in close to the pirate, speaking as low as MacGuffy. “Yes, Lindsay Morgan, scourge of the Pirate Seas. Yes, I killed him and his man, and you can thank me later.”
“ARRGGHH!” MacGuffy suddenly cried, whipping his old cutlass from his bandolier with blinding speed. Bartholomew Cromier, who claimed to be the best swordsman in the king’s navy, barely evaded the blow, quickly brandishing his own blade in defense. “Undeserving murderer!” MacGuffy growled and then called back to his men. “He admits to it! He killed Morgan!”
“ARRGGHH!” the gang of pirates howled into the night, both they and the marines across from them readying their weapons for battle.
“What will you do, old man?” Bartholomew challenged. “You’re without your leader, and you have only this handful of men at your back. This entire city is full of garrisons of the king’s men, guards, and soldiers! They are at my command! If he has any sense in his head, your own captain has undoubtedly unanchored whatever ship on which he now cowers, and has fled out to sea! Dread Steele, indeed. If he were here, that coward would have at least had the good sense to take my deal and give me the boy!”
“Would he now?” MacGuffy smiled again. “Why don’t we ask him?” With three quick tugs of his free hand, MacGuffy pulled away a wig, a false beard, and a fake nose from his face. He straightened his back and loosened his shoulders, spitting a set of false teeth from his mouth.
Jim, the Ratts, and Lacey dropped their jaws nearly to the snowy ground at their feet. “Dread Steele!” they cried together.
Bartholomew Cromier’s prideful sneer fell away, and he took two steps back from the now dark-haired pirate captain, standing confidently before him. “The boy will go free,” Steele proclaimed. “And you shall pay for your crimes! Have at you!”
The battle erupted in the night. The pirates charged the marines, and Steele and Cromier clashed together, the streets suddenly filling with shouts and cries, clangs and cracks.
Jim backed away until he hit the wall of the Vault of Treasures behind him. He saw Butterstreet swoop the chained children into his arms and throw them against the building, keeping himself between them and the melee in the street. As for the skirmish, Jim could hardly believe his eyes. MacGuffy, once the old pirate, now the famed marauder, Dread Steele, attacked Bartholomew Cromier with all of the rage Jim himself wanted to throw at the Captain. Steele seemed as crazed for justice as Jim was, and Jim thought back to the fury that had gripped the pirate at the accusation of playing a part in Lindsay Morgan’s murder. Why would Lindsay Morgan’s oldest adversary fight so hard to avenge him?
Jim had little time to ponder this mystery, however, for as swords and clubs and muskets and bayonets clashed before him, he felt the King of Thieves and Wyzcark creeping up on him from the shadows by the wall.
Jim leapt back from the two master criminals, lifting the amulet high above his head by its chain. “Back off, or I’ll smash it on the ground! I swear I will!”
The King of Thieves and Wyzcark stopped dead in their tracks, the king throwing up his hands as though deeply offended. “Why Jim, I’m disappointed! I would never steal something that has already been agreed upon between two thieves.”
“You’re a liar!” Jim leveled his finger at the King, pulling the amulet just a bit farther over his shoulder.
“A liar?” The King formed the most believable, hurt look on his face. “On the contrary, Jim, I am a man of my word. I made a deal with you, and I always keep my promises.” The King reached behind his back and, from seemingly nowhere, produced Jim’s box, still locked tight by gypsy magic. He held it up on the tips of his long, spindly fingers, like a gift presented to a lord.
Jim’s eyes lit upon the box and, without thinking, his hand holding the amulet dropped just a little.
“You see, Jim,” the King said, his eyes glittering in the moonlight as they coveted the amulet in Jim’s hand. “This is business. You did something for me, now I shall do something for you. Don’t think me a fool Jim, for I don’t take you for one. This box is the key back to the life you were born to, isn’t it? A key back to the life you deserve.”
Jim couldn’t take his eyes off the box. As much as he hated to admit it, the king was right. It was all right there, Hudson had said so, so many nights ago. Even though the treasure in the Vault was gone, the box was all that Jim had left, and perhaps his only means back to his old world of ease and comfort, of servants and clothes, of riding lessons and harpsichord playing, of anything his heart desired.
“And Jim, for all the danger that you’ve faced on my behalf, for all the hardships you’ve suffered these past few months, I’ll make a new deal with you. Use the amulet now. Unlock this box. Take back what rightfully is yours. Then we can find new treasures together, as many and as much as we could possibly imagine! Believe me boy, I have never offered to share such power so wholly and completely as I offer to share it with you now.”
“Don’t listen to him, Jim!�
�� Lacey cried out, but Jim was deaf and blind to all else but the King of Thieves and the cursed box. he lowered the amulet even farther, his shoulders slack, and his gaze still fixed on his box.
“We could be kings, Jim Morgan.” The king drew closer and closer to Jim, his voice low and comforting. “Not false kings of thieves and gangs, nor rulers of hungry, dirty streets, we could be true kings, rulers of lands and men we have never even seen nor known before. Join me and leave the others behind. The box is yours. Untold treasures can be ours! I’ll be like a father to you, and you can be like a son to me. Unlock the box and take the first steps back to where you truly belong.”
Jim’s hand raised again, though this time not above him, but before him. He lifted the amulet to eye level, between him and the box. A faint glimmer emanated from the center of the amulet, the glow reflecting in the eyes of both Jim and the King of Thieves.
“Jim!” George called, but Jim was deaf to their words.
“That’s it, Jim,” the king coaxed. “Time to live up to your potential. Just wish with your heart, speak the name of the amulet, and the life you deserve will be yours again.”
The glow around the amulet became a bright flame of green light, flashing in the dark shadow of the night, splashing the white snow at Jim’s feet with glimmering sparkles. Jim knew what he wanted, most of all in the bottom of his heart, and he envisioned his life, where he would be, and with whom, picturing it all the way to his dying day. He knew what he had to do. The amulet’s light was almost blinding now, and the king and Wyzcark had to squint against the green blaze.
Jim held the amulet high and his lips moved as though under another’s control. “I wish to unlock that which is held fast. I wish to unlock the desire of my heart…my treasure…”
“Yes Jim!” the king cried. “Do it!”
Then something happened the king did not see coming. Jim whirled on his heel and thrust the amulet toward his chained friends. “PORTUNES!” He cried with all his might, and at the sound of his voice, a flare of green flame devoured the chains about the wrists of the Ratts, Lacey, and even Red and the Dragons, leaving nothing but magic embers floating in the night.
“No!” the king cried, for Jim then hurled the amulet through the air to dash it against the cobblestone street. The King, forgetting all else, stretched out for the Amulet with his spidery fingers, but he was too late, the medallion crashed into the stony street and broke apart, shattering to pieces in a blazing, green explosion.
Down on his knees, clutching at the broken shards of the amulet, the King raged and howled and cursed. Jim feared what the King would now do, as madness fully gripped him. But as the King breathed murder towards Jim, the escaped green fire flowing from the ruined talisman climbed up the King’s spidery fingers, snaking it’s way up his long, skinny arms.
“Foolish boy!” the king rasped, his face shaking with fear as he tried to swipe away the green light that now so quickly enveloped him. “Look what you’ve done! It could have been so easy. The treasure was in our grasp. It could have been ours! It could have been—” The King never finished those words. The green magic consumed his entire body, and in a final brilliant flash and puff of green smoke, the King of Thieves vanished into nothingness.
“Look at vat you’ve done!” Wyzcark leapt out from where he was hiding, his crooked little dagger glinting in his fat hand. “You’ve cost us everything, Jim Morgan!” Wyzcark pulled the blade back to strike, but from nowhere, Constable Butterstreet and Thomas, his deputy, jumped between the boy and his attacker.
“You’ll not be hurtin’ these children on my watch, jackanapes!” Butterstreet rumbled. “They’re-gonna-sing-in-my-church-choir!”
The two King’s Men were about to seize the fat, little thief, but Wyzcark slashed out with his knife, backing Thomas and Butterstreet away for just a split second. Then he fled like a clumsy, howling wraith into the shadows, Butterstreet and Thomas hot on his heels. More terrified shouting and screaming followed as Red and his lunks ran off in the other direction as fast as they could, without even a thanks to Jim for setting them free.
Jim stared after them as they went, when he suddenly felt four pairs of arms wrap tightly around him.
“Jim!” George, Peter, and Paul and Lacey cried out in unison as they pulled their friend close.
“Didn’t doubt you for a second, mate!” George said with a smile, clapping Jim on the back.
“Right!” Paul agreed. “Not for a minute!”
“I’m sorry,” were the first words out of Jim’s mouth. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the treasure.”
“Don’t worry, Jim,” Peter said. “You came back for us.”
“And you gave up your box for us,” Lacey said, and as happy as her eyes were, there were tears at their edges. “It was the only thing you had left, Jim. And now it disappeared with the King of Thieves.”
“Well,” Jim said, a small grin forming on his own face. “Not exactly.” And from within the folds of his jacket he withdrew his small wooden box.
“Jim!” George cried, eyes wide in amazement. “I didn’t even see you snatch it! It was the fastest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“It’s all about distraction remember?” Jim’s smile widened across his face. “And I did have a pretty good teacher, didn’t I?”
“But now that the Amulet is destroyed…” Lacey patted Jim’s shoulder softly.
“I thought about opening it for a second, I really did,” Jim said, that lump in his throat forming just for a moment as he looked at his box that may never open. “But something happens when the magic starts to work. It’s like you can see inside yourself. The same thing happened to me when I was in the Vault of Treasures. I looked inside, and I saw me, and then I saw you all with me, and I knew that I couldn’t live any other life without you all as a part of it.”
“You’re our friend forever, Jim,” Peter said.
“Yes,” Lacey agreed, laughing. “We all are, forever!”
Once again, the five friends clasped together in the street, no matter to Jim or the others that pirates and soldiers battled beside them, or that he had just nearly escaped death in the Vault of Treasures. His only care was that he had his friends and that they had him. And that’s when Jim’s hand felt suddenly quite hot.
“Ouch!” Jim cried as the heat grew more intense. With another yelp he dropped what he was holding, grabbing at his hand.
“What’s wrong?” Lacey cried.
“My hand –” Jim started to say, but George interrupted him.
“Jim!” he shouted. “Your box, look!”
The moment Jim’s eyes found his box, he realized what had burned his hand. His box rippled with blue flame, melting the snow around it. A voice whispered in Jim’s ear, a rough, dry voice, crackling at the edges. “When the chains are removed from your heart, at the time appointed by fate,” said the voice, before cackling merrily, silenced only by a loud crack that snapped in the night, the sharp snap also snuffing out the flames engulfing the box. Then Jim’s box did something he never thought he would see it do again. It opened.
THIRTY–FOUR
im fell to his hands and knees in front of the box, his mouth and eyes wide open, his heart slamming in his chest. He reached out with one trembling hand and touched the corner of the box. It was still warm, but cool enough to hold. He picked it up and looked inside. It was all there: the unread letter from his father, written on a tattered and folded scrap of parchment, and resting atop the piece of paper, his father’s shell necklace.
Without knowing exactly why, Jim reached inside the box and withdrew the chain with metal shell on the end. When he touched the charm, Jim had to capture a startled gasp. The necklace was also warm to the touch, but its heat seemed far from fading, as though the metal shell hummed with its own energy.
“Jim, it’s beautiful,” Lacey said from over his shoulder.
“It was my father’s,” Jim said, his eyes fixed on the necklace. A strange idea suddenly struck
Jim, and without even knowing if it would work he reached up and opened the shell and found a flawless and beautiful pearl resting within.
“I’m glad that I at least have this left of your treasure,” Jim said to himself, thinking about his father.
“The treasure?” George asked, wonder filling his voice. “What happened to the rest of it?”
Jim was about to explain further, when he looked up and found a pair of icy blue eyes, set within a pale face, staring at him from across the battle-strewn street. Bartholomew Cromier had seen the bright blue flame that had burned around Jim’s box, and also the beautiful pearl resting on the shell in Jim’s hand. And from the startled spark in Bartholomew’s face, Jim knew that the deadly, black-haired captain wanted even what little remained of Lord Lindsay Morgan’s treasure for his own.
“Jim Morgan!” Bartholomew cried over the din of fighting soldiers and pirates. “The Treasure will be mine!” Bartholomew ran straight for Jim, and for a heart-pounding moment, Jim thought the black haired captain would soon finish what he started in his father’s study. But as a brave man had come to Jim’s aid then, so another came now. Though Jim could still hardly believe who it was: Dread Steele.
“You’ll not lay a hand on the boy or anything left to him,” Steele declared, throwing himself between Jim and Bartholomew. “You’ve taken enough.”
“I’ve only just begun to take from him,” Bartholomew seethed. “But the boy can wait for now. I shall first take from you, Steele – starting with your life!”
Bartholomew charged Steele, and man against man they entered a private duel. Jim couldn’t tear his eyes off them, circling each other, slicing and arching steel between them. The piercing rhythm of their twisting and turning blades echoed in the cold night air. Bartholomew Cromier was faster than Jim believed a man could be, making Jim’s old fencing instructor look like an actor playing with toy swords. But even the wicked captain was unable to solve Steele’s subtle movements. The pirate lord seemed to make only half the defenses and attacks Bartholomew did, and without a doubt, it was he who was in control of the battle. Steele was hardly winded, while the younger, dark-haired captain of the royal navy grew steadily more exhausted.
Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves Page 24