by Geoff Rodkey
He turned back to me, exasperated. “I don’t know! Ask Kira!”
He gestured across the room at Li Homaya’s pretty Native translator. She stood with her back to us, talking to Guts while a few of the band members slunk around nearby, hoping for an audience with her.
“Why would she know?”
“Because she’s one of them!”
MOST OF THE CROWD was getting up to leave. I practically plowed over a few of the older guests as I raced to Guts and the Native girl. Guts’s eyes were twitching madly as he spoke to her.
“Anytime, yeh, great. Whenever—”
“Hello,” I blurted out.
Guts glared daggers at me, and I heard one of the band members curse me for not waiting my turn. But the Native girl turned to me with a polite smile.
“Hello. You are Mr. Guts’s friend?”
“Partner, more like,” grumbled Guts.
“I’m Egg. Hi.”
“I am Kira.” She extended her hand.
“Are you Okalu?” I asked before I’d even finished shaking her hand.
A flicker of surprise crossed her face. “Yes.”
Guts’s eyes bugged out as they swerved away from me and back to her.
“You know of my tribe?”
I suddenly realized I had no idea what I should say. “Sort of…I mean, not—”
“Got a map!” yelped Guts.
She turned to him. “I’m sorry?”
I put a hand on Guts’s arm to warn him that I should do the talking. But he yanked it away.
“Got a map. Can’t read it, tho’. From the Fire King’s tomb—”
“Guts, can you—?”
“There’s a treasure! Look here—”
Before I could stop him, he pulled the Fire King’s necklace from his pocket. He carried it everywhere because we couldn’t think of any safer place. We’d cleaned it a while back, removing all the dirt and scraggly feathers, so the stones glittered in the candlelight as he held it up.
Kira stared at it, her big dark eyes going wide with disbelief. I tried to grab the necklace away—flashing it around seemed like a terrible idea—but when I reached for it, Guts jabbed at me with his hook like he meant business.
“Will you let me—?” I started to mutter, but she interrupted.
“Where did you get this?”
“Told ye. Fire King’s tomb.”
“Guts—!”
“That’s impossible,” she said. “The Fire King disappeared a hundred years ago. No one knows where—”
“Found it! Back on Deadweather. Me an’ him.”
“Guts, be quiet!” I hissed.
“Do you have the Fist?” Her eyes were wide and grave.
“Nah—got a—”
“What Fist?” I interrupted, trying to sound like I didn’t know what she was talking about. According to Millicent, the Fist of Ka was the most important part of the Fire King’s treasure—some kind of magical totem with supernatural powers.
She turned to me. “The Fist of Ka. The Power Giver.”
The way she said the words made me realize the Fist was every bit as important as Millicent had said.
“Let’s just say—” I began.
“Fist’s part o’ the treasure, yeh? Got a map! Shows us where it is!”
“Shut up!” I would have smacked him, but he glared back at me with a look that was so wild I figured I might get a hook in my throat if I did.
“Show me this map,” she demanded.
“That’s not—”
“Ain’t on paper. In his head. Got it memorized.”
“Shut up!” For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why Guts—ordinarily the most suspicious, untrusting person I’d ever met—was telling her everything we knew, without even being asked.
She turned back to me again. “Is this true?”
“Maybe.” I felt like a fool.
“Where does the map lead?”
“Dunno. Can’t read it,” said Guts. “We ain’t Okalu.”
I wanted to strangle him.
“Wait here. Just one moment. Please don’t move.”
She slipped away through the crowd, band members flocking after her like seabirds chasing a ship. Guts’s eyes stayed locked onto her until she disappeared.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Are you a complete idiot?!”
“Stay away from her! Ain’t fair! Met her first!” His eyes twitched with fury, and I immediately figured out what the problem was.
“You fancy her, don’t you?”
“No! Course not! Yech!” His cheeks were turning bright red. “Just—ye—don’t—back off!”
“I don’t care in the slightest about that. Honestly! But you’re giving everything away! How do we know we can trust her? She works for Li Homaya! She could have us locked up!”
The anger slowly left his eyes. He looked worried.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” he muttered, none too certain.
“How do you know?”
“Won’t tell her no more.”
“There’s nothing left to tell!”
“Didn’t…not…” He stared at the floor, grimacing. “She’s all right,” he said.
“Maybe. We don’t know. Will you let me do the talking?”
He nodded, his face twitching. She returned just then, holding a piece of parchment, an inkpot, and a quill.
“This way. Please.”
She led us to the farthest table, now empty and cleared of plates. She shooed away the clutch of band members following her with a few words in Cartager that sounded polite but made them all hang their heads in disappointment as they shuffled off.
“Sit. Please.”
All three of us sat down. She looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot. Then she put the parchment and ink on the table between us and held out the quill.
“Will you draw me this map?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s valuable. And we don’t know you.”
“I don’t know you, either. How can I be sure you have what you say?”
I took the quill from her, dipped it in the ink, and drew the first four hieroglyphs across the top of the parchment.
Dash dot feather. Cup. Two dash dot firebird. Spear.
I put down the quill and slid the parchment over to her. She stared at it for a moment.
“This says nothing of the Fist.”
A hollow feeling started to grow in my stomach. What if the map wasn’t what we thought it was? What if it wasn’t a map at all?
Back at the tomb, one of the only hieroglyphs Millicent had been able to identify was a lightning bolt over a man’s fist—what she’d said was the symbol for the Fist of Ka. In the entire sequence of the map, it reappeared half a dozen times.
I picked up the quill, took back the parchment, and drew the lightning fist hieroglyph below the others. Then I put down the quill again.
Kira pursed her lips. “You say you do not read Okalu. But you know this is the Fist?”
“It’s the only one I know. That, and”—I pointed with my finger to the firebird I’d already drawn—“the Fire King.”
She was quiet for a moment, staring at the parchment. Then she raised her eyes to mine.
“Draw me the whole map, and I will pay you handsomely.”
Guts and I looked at each other.
“Not fer sale,” he said.
“Not for a thousand gold?”
The number was jaw-dropping. I was still reeling from it when Guts spoke again.
“Not fer ten. Ain’t fer sale.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Why is it so important to you? When you are not Okalu?”
I looked at Guts. I’d been as surprised as she was that he turned down that much money without a second thought. He jerked his head, letting me know it was my job to answer her.
I thought hard before I opened my mouth. “No matter what it’s worth in gold…a man
killed my family for this map. I have to make sure he doesn’t get it.”
“I can promise this.”
I shook my head. “Not good enough.”
She stared at me for a while. Her eyes were impossible to read.
“The Fist of Ka belongs to the Okalu. It has for all eternity. Since we lost its protection, we have fallen from Ka’s favor. Now we are only a few, and our enemies are many. If my people do not recover the Fist, we will surely die.”
She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes burning into mine. “Do you think your claim is stronger than mine?”
I felt the hollowness in my stomach, worse this time. But Guts leaned forward, staring past me to her. “Make ye a deal. Read this map for us, an’ we’ll find it together.”
I nodded. “You get the Fist…and we get the rest of the treasure.”
“What more do you think there is?”
“The Princess of the Dawn’s dowry.” According to the legend we’d heard from Millicent, this was the other part of the treasure the Fire King had vanished with—a massive stash of gold and jewels originally meant as an offering to the sun god Ka.
Kira’s look darkened. “If this is about money, I will give you gold—”
“No,” Guts interrupted. “We got the map. You tell us wot’s in it. All of us find it together.”
I nodded. “That’s the deal. How about it?”
Kira was silent for a long time. First she looked at Guts. Then me. Then she stared at the table.
“I cannot do this,” she said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I cannot translate it,” she said. “I know a few symbols—” She pointed to what I’d drawn. “The Fist…Hutmatozal, the last of the Fire Kings…But the others…” She shrugged. “Only the scribes and elders can read them. I do not have this learning.”
“Where can we find someone who does?”
“In the north. Beyond the mountains of the Cat’s Teeth.”
“Will you take us there?” I asked.
She nodded. “How soon can you leave?”
KIRA DIDN’T WANT to waste any time. Half an hour later, Guts and I were back in our apartment, our rucksack packed with guns, knives, money, spare clothes, and what little food we had, waiting for her to knock on our door.
“Don’t bring more than you can carry,” she’d said. “And make sure you’ve got weapons and money.”
“What for?”
“The usual reasons. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
She’d rushed off into the night before I could ask what the usual reasons were, and I was still wondering about them as I watched Guts settle back in his favorite chair, his guitar across his lap. But instead of playing, he just stared at it with a sad look.
We’d both been quiet since we left Kira. All sorts of thoughts were running through my head, and not just about the weapons and money. There was also the fact that we didn’t really understand what the Fist of Ka was. The way Kira’s voice sounded when she spoke of it made me worry we’d gotten ourselves into something that was too big for us, and that we had no business messing with.
Then there was the fact that we knew next to nothing about her—where she’d come from, why she was working for Li Homaya.
And leaving at a moment’s notice, in the middle of the night, seemed reckless, and maybe even stupid.
Guts looked conflicted, too. But I figured it wasn’t about any of that. He ran his fingers over the headstock of his guitar, like he was scratching a favorite pet.
“Been good here,” he said.
“We can always come back afterward,” I said.
He nodded, perking up a little.
“Maybe you should bring the guitar,” I said.
“Maybe. Need a strap, tho’. Illy’s got one.” He stood up. “Think I got time to—?”
There was a knock at the door.
“Guess you don’t,” I said.
“Probably ain’t her yet. Bet it’s the gigglers.”
I smiled at the thought of the Cartager girls who followed Guts around. They annoyed me to no end, but I knew they’d be sad when he left.
“Try to let them down easy,” I said.
As Guts went to answer the door, I turned away to get a drink of water from a jug in the kitchen nook. I had the jug in my hand, my back to the door, when I heard Guts begin to say—
“Who the—?”
There was a loud, sickening crack.
I turned just in time to see Guts crumple to the floor. A massive, wide-shouldered Native in a dark Continental shirt stood over him, holding a wooden club.
An even bigger Native was halfway across the room, headed straight for me.
I remember his eyes, which were big and black and angry.
He must have had a club, too. But I don’t remember it, or anything else for a long time after that.
CHAINED
I woke up with a throbbing ache in my head. Something was thudding against my face, over and over.
I opened my eyes, but there was only blackness. And when I tried to raise my hand to my head, I found out I wasn’t just blind, but paralyzed.
I tried to scream—but the sound stuck in my throat. I couldn’t move my tongue or close my mouth.
I panicked and started to wriggle like a fish on land. When I did, I felt myself start to slide down—or was it up? Which way was up?—and then someone grabbed hold of me, which was actually comforting for a second until they slugged me, hard, in my lower back. As the fresh pain surged through me, I heard a muffled growl, and I got the message that if I didn’t want to get slugged again, I’d better cut out the wriggling.
I tried to calm down by breathing deep, but I couldn’t take in any air through my mouth. Gradually, I figured out that the problem was that some kind of cloth was stuffed in it, which also explained why I couldn’t talk or move my tongue…and then I realized I couldn’t see because something was covering my head…and I couldn’t move my arms or legs because I was tied up.
And I was upside down. Or at least my head was.
Eventually, I figured out that the thing hitting my face was the side of a horse. And it wasn’t hitting me so much as I was hitting it—I’d been jackknifed across its back like a sack of potatoes, wedged between the horse’s neck and the legs of what I guessed was one of the big Natives who’d attacked us.
Realizing I wasn’t blind or paralyzed was a relief, but other than that it was a pretty bad situation. My arms and legs were numb, and all the blood vessels in my head felt like they were going to burst, especially around my left temple, which throbbed with pain where I must have taken the hit that knocked me out.
Since I couldn’t see, there was no way to anticipate the horse’s movements, so whenever it shifted course my head banged against its flank, which made it hurt even more.
Judging by the heat of the sun on my back and the heaviness of the air, I figured we’d traveled through the night. This gave me some hope that whoever had kidnapped us—I could hear the clop of another horse, so I was counting on Guts being with us—would stop soon so they could rest, or eat, or at least pee, and when they did, they’d turn me right side up.
But they didn’t stop. For a while, we seemed to be climbing uphill, then down again. We crossed two rivers, one loud and roaring, and the other so deep that my head got dunked a couple of times.
Then, as the heat slacked off and I figured the sun must be setting, we entered a swamp—at least, that’s what I gathered from the buzz of insects and the spluck of the horses’ hooves.
By the time we reached the swamp, I’d had the whole day to think about what had happened. Not that I needed much time to figure it out. The Natives who’d attacked us had big dark eyes, just like Kira’s, and the fact that they’d shown up right after we told her where we lived made it pretty obvious they were Okalu, too, and she’d sent them to kidnap us.
The kidnapping seemed pointless. They were probably taking us to their territory, somewhere in the northern
mountains, but we’d been planning to go there anyway. The senselessness of it—why tie us up and carry us someplace we were happy to walk to?—didn’t leave me too hopeful that they were reasonable people.
I realized I’d been thinking of the Okalu as somehow friendly, or at least harmless—like the fact that they were so hard to find, and had fallen from power and were losing their death struggle with the Moku, meant we had nothing to fear from them.
But there was no good reason to believe that. As I thought about it, dangling upside down with a throbbing head, it seemed just as likely that the Moku were trying to wipe them out because the Okalu were the worst of the worst, the most savage of the savages.
Then I remembered what the crew of the Thrush had said about Natives cutting out our hearts and eating them, and I started to get panicky.
I tried to puzzle out some way to bargain with them for our lives, but we didn’t have much to offer. Once I’d coughed up the map—and I figured they’d torture me until I did—we were useless to them. Even if they didn’t go so far as eating our hearts, they’d almost definitely slaughter us without a second thought.
Maybe they like music, and they’ll let Guts live if he plays guitar for them.
But what are the odds they brought the guitar? Not good.
Maybe we can make one.
Make a guitar? Ridiculous.
Maybe they’d go back to Pella and pick it up?
Even more ridiculous.
How do I know Guts is even with us? Maybe they already killed him. Maybe she told them to take just me, because I’m the one with the map.
We’re doomed. We never should have trusted that girl.
What was it Millicent said to me? On the lawn of her mansion, the day we met?
The memory came bright and clear, right down to the green stripe on the croquet mallet perched on Millicent’s shoulder, and the sun in her hair and the freckles on her nose as she scrunched it up, a teasing grin on her face:
“Come now, Egg. All the books you’ve read, and you don’t know beautiful women are evil?”
I should have told Guts that, before he’d gone and shot off his mouth to a pretty girl and gotten us killed for it.
But it was too late.
And now I was never going to see Millicent again.