by Geoff Rodkey
I nodded. “I think so. I hope so. Had to wreck the original so Pembroke couldn’t get it.”
Dad stiffened. “Bloke better not’ve gone messin’ near me plantation,” he growled.
“He did more than that—he took it over for a while,” I said.
“Wot?! — —!” he bellowed.
I nodded. “First he sent a whole squad of soldiers. Paid off Percy to help them. They moved into the house, dug up half the plantation looking for the treasure. When I got back, we had to run them off. Then Pembroke came back with a hundred men, and we had to stand them down, too.”
Dad was staring at me, his mouth open. I could feel the pride swell up in my chest. After all those years of getting ignored, smacked around, and picked on, he was finally figuring out it was me, not my fool siblings, who’d come through for him when the chips were down.
Growing up, I used to dream about a moment like this—when all the unfairness and stupidity of my family got turned around and made right in a heartbeat. In spite of all the danger we were in, I couldn’t help smiling.
Except I was dead wrong. He wasn’t gaping at me because he was impressed. He was just trying to do the math in his head.
“Four o’ ye? Run off a hundred soldiers?”
“Three, actually. And the field pirates helped. Sort of. Most of them skipped out when it got hot, to be honest.”
“They didn’t stab ye in the back? Not even the smart ones?”
“Not at first.”
“Don’t sound like ’em.”
“I think they were loyal enough to—”
“Ain’t no field pirate’s loyal.”
“Well, they certainly didn’t want Rovian soldiers on their land.”
“Ain’t their land. It’s mine. An’ why’d they let ’em in to begin with?”
“What?” I was starting to feel a little panicky.
“Said the soldiers moved in! Dug up half the plantation. Who let ’em do it?”
“Wasn’t me. I wasn’t there—”
“Field pirates were. Let ’em waltz right in! Then ye come back, an’ they flip to backin’ yer lot? Jus’ like that?”
“Well, kind of—”
“Wot’d ye pay ’em?”
“A share of the treasure—”
“Weren’t no treasure yet. An ’em Rovians hadn’t cut a better deal? That Pembroke richy weren’t smart enough to line some thin pockets?”
It went on like that for a while. Dad kept getting more and more angry and suspicious, and I got so flustered, I could barely stammer out answers. I knew if I admitted the truth, he was going to explode. But I wasn’t clever enough to come up with a lie that made sense.
And we were wasting valuable time. So finally, I gave it up.
“Don’t make no sense! Wot’d ye give ’em to flip?”
“A share of the plantation.”
“WOT?!” He bellowed so loud that a pair of Moku women a hundred yards from us on the far side of the plaza whipped their heads around to see what was happening.
“Not all of it! Just a share.”
“Wot kind o’ share?!”
“Equal.”
“Equal fer who?!”
“All of them.”
“There’s FIFTY of ’em!”
“I didn’t have a choice! I had to give them—”
“It weren’t yours to give!” He was standing over me now, purple-faced with fury.
“I thought you were dead! I—”
“It’s all we have!”
He raised his arm to hit me. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it.
But he didn’t lay a hand on me.
He kept yelling, his rage mixing with grief.
“I built it from nothin’! With me bloody bare hands! Me life’s work! An’ the day I go—ye give it away? Like it was nothin’ to ye?!”
I couldn’t look at him. He sounded like he was about to cry.
He was quiet for a second. When he spoke up again, the words hurt more than his fists ever could.
“Knew ye was a curse on me from the day ye killed yer mum.”
For all the times my brother and sister had accused me of murdering my mother just by being born, I’d never once heard it come from Dad himself. He might have thought it plenty. But until then, he’d never said it out loud.
And it broke me. I put my head in my hands so he couldn’t see the tears.
Then I heard the scrape of his boot as he turned and left me.
BY THE TIME I put myself back together enough to look up, I was alone. Dad had disappeared, and his shadow must have followed him. The two warriors were gone, too. I guess the Moku didn’t think I was worth keeping an eye on.
I went to the pit, hoping I could talk to the others. As I walked there, passing the occasional Moku who eyed me with the kind of wary look you’d give a stray dog, I told myself it didn’t matter what had happened with Dad. No matter how awful I felt, or how bad things seemed, I still had to get my friends out of that pit.
I figured if I could just talk to them, they’d have ideas about what to do. But when I got near the pit, the guard chased me off, waving me back to the avenue with his rifle.
I stood in the road for a while, trying to work out a plan in my head.
All I could think was to wait until the middle of the night, sneak over to the pit, knock out the guard, and pull them up.
But it was barely midday, and as far as I knew, the Rovians might show up any minute.
And even if I got them out of the pit, how were we going to leave the city without being seen?
I walked back to the ruined wall where we’d first entered, to see if it was still guarded, and whether we could somehow get out that way.
There was a sentry with a rifle in the same place as before—to the left of the road, atop the intact side of the wall. He barely looked at me, even when I passed the wall and started down the road. For a moment, the thought crossed my mind that no one was stopping me, and I could leave right then if I wanted to.
Except I couldn’t, because everyone I cared about was still back inside the city, and anyway I had no idea where to go even if I did abandon them.
I turned back around and picked my way over the pile of rubble on the far side of the road until I reached the intact section of the wall, which I managed to climb from the top of the heap.
From the top of the wall, I could see the road snake across the valley for a few miles until it disappeared between the forested hills.
There was no sign of men on horseback. Not yet, anyway.
The sentry yelled something at me from across the road. I had no idea what the words meant, but his tone was pleasant enough—and when I looked at him, he was grinning. I managed a smile back and gave him a sort of wave, and he chuckled and said something else in a friendly voice before he went back to ignoring me.
It didn’t make any sense. We were prisoners, marched in at gunpoint with our hands tied, but I was free to leave.
They tossed us in a pit, but they cooked us breakfast.
They did unspeakable things to their own people, and then they laughed and joked with me.
And they made my fool sister into a queen, or something like it.
Maybe they’d let the others go if I just knew how to ask.
But then why wouldn’t they let me near the pit?
I wished I could talk to Kira. She understood Moku, and she might be able to explain things.
I watched the horizon for a while, looking for any sign of men on horses.
Then it occurred to me they might be coming from a different direction, and I needed to scout other possible exits anyway, so I started to walk the length of the wall.
It was ten feet high and maybe two feet wide, and over the next few hours I walked the whole thing, all the way around the perimeter of the city.
I didn’t learn much. Most of the buildings near the wall were abandoned, and one whole section had been fenced off and given over to pigs and chickens. There was a
second gate on the far side of the city from the ruined one, with a paved road leading away down the hillside. That gate was intact, its heavy wooden doors shut with a massive bolt that looked like it’d take several men just to lift.
The wall was too high and smooth to climb. The best option I found for getting over it was a spot west of the temple, not far from Dad’s house, where a couple of big trees looked just close enough to the wall that I could jump to it from one of the lower branches. It’d be tricky, especially in the dark, but I studied the location of the spot carefully so I could lead the others there.
When I came back around and the sentry saw me approach from the opposite direction, he laughed and said something. I smiled at him and shrugged. Then I jumped off the wall, nearly spraining an ankle, and spent the next hour scouring ruined buildings for a rock the right size and shape to use as a weapon.
Eventually, I found a long, narrow stone about ten inches long that fit my hand pretty well and felt like it could do some damage at close quarters. I paired that up with a fist-sized rock that was good for throwing.
By then, it was late afternoon. I was getting hungry, so I went back to the middle of town to look for food I could eat and maybe bring to the others.
I didn’t see Dad anywhere, but his Moku shadow was outside the house, cooking meat over the fire. I put the rocks down, then pointed to my mouth with what I hoped was a polite look. He nodded and gestured for me to sit.
I sat down in the shade of the house. Then I pulled out a smaller rock I’d picked up to use as a chisel and started to chip away at one end of the long stone, trying to give it a sharper edge.
A few minutes later, Dad came back. He was frowning.
“Where ye been?”
“Looking around. Thinking.”
“Been thinkin’, too.” He sat down next to me, his back against the wall of the house.
“I’m sorry about the plantation,” I said.
“Yeh.” He rested his forearms on his bent knees and stared at his hands.
I was about to apologize a second time when he spoke up.
“Lookin’ at it from yer angle…makes sense. I know ye was hard up against it, and thinkin’ we was dead besides. Talked to yer friends some when I took ’em food just now—”
“You did? Can we go back? So I can talk to them?”
Dad grimaced. “Best not. Don’t want them savages gettin’ suspicious.”
“Of what?” I asked.
“In a minute. Gotta say this first…” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly through his nose. He studied the line of dirt under the nail of his grimy index finger.
“Seem like good kids ye hooked up with. That blondie got a knife fer a tongue. Reminds me of yer mum.”
He raised his head and stared at the sky with the same achingly sad look he used to get back on Deadweather, when he’d sit on our porch and stare out past the shoulder of the volcano, in the direction of my mother’s grave. I’d seen that heartbroken look on his face a thousand times, but until that moment, I don’t think I’d ever really understood what it meant: that after all these years, he was still in love with my mother, and grieving her loss.
And if the fact that she’d died having me meant that I was the person who’d taken her from him…
My eyes were welling up. “I’m sorry—” I started to say.
“Nah,” he said, stopping me. “Got nothin’ to be sorry fer. On me, it is. Ain’t been much of a dad to ye. I know it.”
My throat was thick, and it was hard to talk. “You’ve been all right,” I managed.
He shook his head. “Nah, I ain’t. But there’s time yet. Gonna do right by ye.”
He lowered his voice. “Cooked a plan with yer friends to get ye all out. Adonis, too. But ye gotta promise me sumpin’.”
“What’s that?”
“Gonna help me get that plantation back.”
I nodded.
“Not just fer me. Fer you, too. ’S’all we got in this world. Be sunk without it.”
I wiped the wetness from my eyes. “We’ll get it back. I promise.”
“Told Adonis the same. Gonna have to work together, I said. Told ’im yer his brother. He’s gotta treat ye like it.”
That seemed like a pretty tall order where Adonis was concerned. But I nodded again.
“Right, then. Here’s wot we’ll do.”
Dad’s plan was basically the same as mine—to wait until dark, sneak over to the pit, knock out the guard, and pull the others up with the available ropes. Kira had told Dad she knew a way out of the city and could lead us to it even in the dark.
In the meantime, we just had to hope the Rovians didn’t show up before we could take our shot.
And Dad added one more complication.
“Gotta make it look like ye did it without me. Can’t let on I helped ye.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?”
He shook his head. “Gotta stay with yer sister. Get her out, too. Gonna take time. Might help matters havin’ them Rovians come round, tho’. ’Specially if they speak savage.”
“What about Roger Pembroke?”
“Wot of ’im? Far as he knows, I still think that business with the balloon was an accident. Map on Deadweather’s busted, wot else he want from me? Long’s I play dumb ’bout you and yers, man’s got no reason to trouble me.
“Same’s true o’ them Moku—long’s they don’t figger I helped ye cut out. I been square with this bunch. Do just fine with ’em till I can convince yer sister to give it up and go home.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. The Moku were friendly enough to him now, but I figured things would get pretty hot for Dad after we’d escaped, especially once Pembroke’s men showed up.
But when I tried to persuade him to come with us, he shrugged it off.
“No point in chewin’ on it. I’m stayin’.”
THE NEXT FEW HOURS were tense and endless. Until well after sunset, I kept jumping at random noises in the distance, thinking they were horses’ hooves. And when I wasn’t fretting over that, I was worrying about how we were going to pull off the escape, and what the Moku might do if they caught us.
We turned in early, pretending to go to sleep. Then we had to wait for what seemed like an eternity before Dad’s shadow quit hanging around in front of the dying fire by our door and went off to sleep himself.
After that, we waited another hour to make sure the rest of the city had turned in for the night.
Finally, I felt Dad’s hand shake me on the leg. I got up and followed him outside, carrying the two stones I’d planned to use as weapons.
We’d decided to travel to the pit separately so no one would spot Dad walking with me. Since he knew the city much better than I did, he sent me down the main avenue while he made his way along the smaller dirt roads behind it.
There wasn’t much of a moon, and if it hadn’t been for the occasional cooking fires in front of the buildings off the main road, I would have had a hard time keeping my bearings. As it was, I missed the turn the first time and had to double back.
It felt odd to not even try to hide myself, but when we’d discussed it earlier, Dad had pointed out that I hadn’t done anything wrong yet, so there was no reason to fear being seen. In any case, I didn’t see a soul until I got near the pit and made out the hazy outline of the rock that the guard usually sat on.
I was surprised to see nobody was sitting on it, and for a moment I dared to hope the guard had left for the evening. But as I got closer, I saw the body of a Moku lying splayed on the ground, unconscious, beside the rock.
Dad had started without me.
I hurried past the guard, and the first person I saw was Adonis, watching Dad haul someone up out of the pit. Adonis glanced at me, and from what I could see in the dark, something looked out of kilter on his face—like his eye was swollen, or maybe his cheekbone.
I wondered if he’d had a run-in with one of my friends.
But I didn’t have a chance to loo
k closer, because just then Dad pulled Kira up. She stepped past him, and he quickly fed the rope down for the others.
“You know a way out of the city?” I whispered to her.
“There’s a tunnel. Shhh. Stay quiet.”
Millicent came up next, and she gave me a quick hug. Half a minute later, Guts joined us.
Just like that, we were done. Dad was breathing hard from the effort. He reached out and grabbed my shoulder with one of his big hands, then pulled Adonis to him with the other.
“Look out fer each other. And git that plantation back,” he said in a low growl, squeezing my upper arm hard to make his point. “See ye there soon enuff.”
Then he vanished into the night.
Kira beckoned us to follow her. We tiptoed past the still-unconscious guard and went to the main avenue. Kira led us across the road, between a pair of low stone buildings. A hundred feet farther on, we reached a back road.
Kira started us down the back road in the direction of the temple, moving so fast it was hard to keep up with her and not make noise. Most of the buildings we passed were abandoned, so there wasn’t any firelight, and when she turned a couple of times, I nearly lost her.
As we weaved our way closer to the temple, a few scattered cooking fires began to appear, and Kira slowed her pace so we could move more quietly.
We came upon a street that felt familiar even in the near-darkness. When she turned us down it, I realized why—it was the same street where Dad had his house. Kira led us right past his place, away from the main avenue and toward the city wall.
When she stopped us, we were close enough to the wall that I could make out its silhouette against the sky. There was a small stone building on either side of the road. The embers of a cooking fire smoldered in front of one.
Kira took a few tentative steps toward it, her neck craned as she stared at it.
Then she turned and led us to the second building, directly across the street. A few feet from the entrance, she held up her hand to stop us. She continued forward alone, peered into the open window, then cautiously stepped inside.