He felt Rudolfo’s hand on his shoulder and translated the coded words pressed there with his friend’s fingers. What’s wrong?
I don’t know, Gregoric answered. He took a deep breath as the clenching subsided and then checked the window.
Moonlight etched the room in soft shades of green and blue, but Gregoric found his vision coming and going with the onset of a sharp pain behind his temple. A desk stood before the window, its surface tidy in a way that suggested it was never used. It was a smallish room, and apart from the ordered nature of it, it looked a great deal like Rafe Merrique’s stateroom. A narrow bed piled in blankets, bookcases crammed with books and charts, a few objects here and there—including the jade kinshark, within reach on the corner of the desk.
Gregoric slipped onto the desk and dropped to the floor, then put his hand on the kinshark and waited for the magicks to work their way onto it. It guttered and flickered in and out of focus, but the magicks didn’t hold. More than that, Gregoric’s hand came in and out of focus along with the jade statuette.
“Who’s there?”
Gregoric jumped, and the jade statue grated against the desk. He backed into the shadows and looked in the direction of the bed.
The pile of blankets had become a young woman sitting up in bed staring directly at him. “Rafe? Is that you?”
The name and the familiar way that she used it was as shocking to him as the cold water he’d been dropped in over and over again by the man attached to that name. Gregoric looked to the door and back to the bed. His first impulse was to flee, and his second was to reach her and silence her before she called for help.
Except it is almost as if she expected us. And Rafe specifically.
And before he could do anything, another cramp seized him, and he fell over this time. He closed his eyes against the sudden onset of it as his entire body clenched in pain.
“We are affiliates of Rafe Merrique,” a low voice confided from the window. There was fear underneath Rudolfo’s voice but Gregoric was confident that the girl could not hear it. “It appears perhaps we were expected?”
Gregoric squinted up at her as she looked to Rudolfo. “No,” she said in a careful voice. “You were not expected. But he is hoped for every day.” There was an emotion there that spoke to some kind of longing Gregoric couldn’t fathom, followed by a bitterness he could. “At least some of us around here feel that way.”
And for whatever reason, those words were the spark that, combined with the layout of the room, gave it all enough sense that Gregoric could solve the Whymer Maze before him.
This is Merrique Manor. This was Rafe Merrique’s boyhood room, organized in the likeness of the stateroom of a pirate ship he’d yet to steal and sail. An imagined future he had crafted for himself.
The realization was lost to more cramping, and Gregoric groaned as his legs and arm shifted in and out of focus beneath the moonlight.
Rudolfo hopped to the floor beside him. “What’s happening?”
Gregoric bit his tongue against the tremors that now rolled over his body.
“Something’s wrong with his magicks.” The young woman was up out of bed now, wrapped in a blanket, and reaching for her lamp. “Who are you? You still haven’t answered my question.” She paused and her next words weren’t convincing. “I’m not above screaming for help.”
“I hope you won’t,” Rudolfo said. “As I said, we are affiliates, and Captain Merrique would be quite unhappy with any mistreatment we might receive at your hands.” He was thinking fast on his feet, and Gregoric was glad. His own ability to think shrank the longer his body shook against the magicks.
They both knelt over Gregoric, and he felt her hand, cool against the heat of his skin. “So you are part of his crew then? I saw him lifting up Rafe’s kinshark statue.”
“Of a fashion,” Rudolfo said. “We are sailing with him in service to the light.”
She snorted. “That explains little.” Gregoric felt her hands probing his neck and armpits. “How are your magicks holding up?”
“Fine.” Rudolfo paused and Gregoric felt his fingers suddenly pressing words into his shoulder. Did Merrique’s magicks do this to you?
Gregoric couldn’t keep the shaking still enough to code his words. “I used my own,” he said through chattering teeth.
“I know little of these things,” Rudolfo said, “but Merrique told us to use the powders he provided. He said the salt air could have an impact on ours.”
She sniffed Gregoric’s breath. “Fortunately, I know a bit about these things. And I have what I need in my workshop to treat him.”
The trembling and cramping stopped for a moment and Gregoric tried to climb to his feet, only to find his legs now unable to hold his weight. He buckled.
“And where exactly is that?” Rudolfo asked.
“It’s in the basement,” she said, “but I can be there and back quickly.”
There was no hesitation in Rudolfo’s reply as he squeezed Gregoric’s shoulder. “We are at your mercy, Lady,” he said.
She grinned. “Yes. You are.”
She slipped into a robe and slippers but didn’t leave by the door. Instead, she ducked into the closet.
The kinshark lifted from the desk and Gregoric blinked at it as it gradually disappeared. “What was the book he told us to take?” Rudolfo asked.
Gregoric found his voice. “You’re not planning to—“
“Save your voice, Gregoric,” Rudolfo said. “And yes. I do not know exactly who she is or where we are, but I intend to complete the task and escape even if I have to carry you out of here on my back.”
“It’s his own house, Rudolfo.” Gregoric’s voice was raspy. “He’s had us break into his own house.”
“To be fair,” Rafe Merrique said from the closet, “I didn’t think anyone would be at home apart from the staff. But I see you’ve met my sister, Drea.” A wall of clothing rustled as his magicked form entered the room.
There was an edge in Rudolfo’s voice. “This doesn’t appear to be quite the act of piracy we discussed, Captain Merrique.”
“No,” the pirate agreed. “Not at all.” His voice was closer now. Gregoric felt a boot nudging his side, and too weak to snarl, he groaned. “And the stubborn baboon used his own magicks despite my warning.”
“Aye,” Rudolfo agreed.
Gregoric felt Merrique’s hands, strong and firm, taking his ankles. “Grab his arms then. We need to be gone before she returns.”
The hands tugged at him but no others joined in. Gregoric saw the young woman was back now, postured in mock outrage in the open closet with her hands upon her hips. “Do you now?” she said. “I think you’ve spent enough time gone, Rafe Merrique.”
Her brother chuckled. “I thought you were all going to be at the summer lodge on Lake Elsyn?”
“I decided to stay home when I saw the bird from Simmons.” Drea Merrique smiled and Gregoric saw a strong beauty in the line of her jaw. “I know which people you correspond with when you’re going to be in the area.”
“Yes,” Rafe said. “But I time my visits for when everyone’s away. I didn’t expect to find you here. Neither at home nor in my room. I sent them for my journal and my statue from Grandfather. Why aren’t you in your own room?”
Drea shrugged. “I like it in here. Not everyone’s big brother is a famous pirate.” Then she smiled. “Besides, I was hoping you’d be back and thought this would be the best way to catch you. The oily-voiced one already has the statue, I’ll wager.” She pointed to the drawer on the desk. “The journal is still there. They’ve kept it all the same since you left . . . only cleaner . . . which has always struck me as odd.” She stepped from the closet and knelt over Gregoric, drawing a satchel up from the leather strap it hung by. Drea rummaged through it, drew out an envelope and tore it open.
“Give me a canteen,” she said, then her warm breath was near Gregoric’s ear. “Open up, sailor.”
He complied and tasted the bitterness of the powders s
he tipped onto his tongue. She closed his mouth, opened another envelope and mixed those in as well. He felt foam building as the powders hissed and bubbled. Drea uncapped the canteen and pressed it to his mouth, the cold water pushing the powders down his throat. He felt the softening of all his edges as the kallacaine relaxed his muscles. His eyelids were heavy, and he could see his hand clearly now when he held it before his face.
Drea Merrique pushed his hand away and down. “This one is going to need some rest before he can be re-magicked.”
“He can rest on the ship,” Rafe said.
Drea ignored her brother. “Help me get him into the bed,” she said.
This time, Gregoric felt hands half lifting and half dragging him across the room and he did his best to help until he rolled into the bed and hands pulled the blankets over him. Behind them, he heard Rafe protesting. “We don’t have time, Drea. This was supposed to be a quick in and out.”
“Next time,” she said, “you should have the civility to plan a longer visit.”
Rafe smiled. “I might be able to now, and you’ve these men to thank for it.”
Then Gregoric was in a warm tunnel. The room, the bed, and their voices were all growing farther away.
“I asked them who they were,” she said. “They wouldn’t say.”
“How rude of them,” Rafe Merrique observed. “These men have acquired the brooch and brought it to me at great expense.” His voice was sober now, and Gregoric heard Drea gasp as the words took hold. “We’ve brought it back tonight. Tell them that it’s back in the family vault.”
Their act of piracy had been breaking into Rafe Merrique’s family estate to return the brooch Rudolfo had spent a dozen fortunes to acquire. There was some aspect of this that made Gregoric want to laugh and not stop laughing, but he was too tired. There were more words, and he could’ve sworn he heard his friend introducing them with great flair and embellishment. But everything melted into warmth and darkness as Gregoric slid into a deep and welcome sleep.
At some point, Gregoric awakened to the lurch and lope of being carried across a meadow in the gray of predawn. He was certain he must be dreaming, strapped to someone’s back as they ran.
“What’s happening?” His mouth was dry as cotton and his voice raspy.
“Easy, Gregoric,” Rudolfo panted. “We’re nearly there.”
He’s carrying me. Gregoric tried to move but found he couldn’t. He’d been tied over Rudolfo’s shoulders with belts, and they were both wet from the sweat of Rudolfo’s exertion as he ran.
Every word was an effort, but he forced them out. “You should not be carrying me, General.”
And Rudolfo’s words silenced him for the rest of the run and long after hands had lifted him up and pulled him aboard the waiting ship. He took those words with him back into sleep. “You’ve always carried me, Gregoric,” his king and closest friend said between ragged breaths, “and across much rougher landscapes.” His hands squeezed Gregoric where they held him across his shoulders. “From time to time, when it falls to me to return that favor, I will carry you, my friend.”
Gregoric smiled as the rocking of the waves replaced the rocking of their run and sleep carried him back down the warm well of Rudolfo’s echoing words. They were a slow refrain to a song that soothed him and flooded him with an unexpected gratitude.
I will carry you, my friend.
Gregoric watched his second sunset at sea from a hammock they’d rigged for him on deck, and Rudolfo sat nearby and watched it with him. He’d been nearby most of the time Gregoric had been awake, and according to Jasper, he’d stayed by while Gregoric slept.
“We tried to help him carry you,” she had told him during one of Rudolfo’s brief absences, “but he insisted upon doing it himself.”
Rudolfo said nothing about it, and Gregoric wasn’t about to bring it up.
They watched the setting sun paint a wide-open sky in colors so overpowering that he simply watched slack-jawed in wonder. Rafe Merrique approached, raising a bottle of rum.
“How are you feeling?” the pirate asked, offering Gregoric the bottle.
Gregoric took it. “Much better,” he said. He drank from the bottle and passed it to Rudolfo.
The Gypsy King took a long drink and handed the bottle back to Rafe. “And how are you, Captain Merrique?”
Rafe’s face was a mix of emotion, and he tried to hide it with another swig of rum. He smiled, but his eyes held something closer to sadness in them. “I’ve seen my sister a handful of times in twenty years. She was five when I left.” He leaned back against the mast. “I was at odds with my parents and the life they planned for me—the life planned for them by their parents. But Drea—she was the innocent caught in the wake of my departure.” He took another long drink from the bottle.
“Regret,” Rafe said, “is a curious thing. Our Androfrancine friends would tell us the only useful regret is the variety that is more akin to guilt—feelings of remorse that lead to a change in one’s path.” He used the bottle to conduct the next words as if he were in front of a choir. “Because as we all know, ‘Change is the path life takes.’”
“I aim to regret nothing,” Rudolfo said.
Rafe Merrique laughed. “Good luck.”
Jasper poked her head out of the hatch and looked around. Gregoric saw her eyes meet with Rudolfo’s and suppressed his smile. It seemed that sometime in the last twenty-four hours, Merrique’s first mate had decided Rudolfo’s library was perfectly adequate, shelf, book, and all. Which of course meant Gregoric would be staying up on deck long into the night.
The coded looks between the two of them weren’t lost on Rafe either, but like Gregoric, he pretended not to notice.
“You’re certain,” Rudolfo asked, “that you want to proceed, Gregoric?” He looked up at Merrique. “When is our last chance to change our minds?”
Merrique chuckled. “We’re pirates. We can always change our minds.”
Rudolfo stroked his beard and considered Gregoric carefully. “And you’re quite comfortable here for, say, a few hours?”
Now Rafe’s chuckle was the bark of a laugh. “Best not keep my first mate waiting, Lord Rudolfo. She brooks no dissent.”
Gregoric smiled as Rudolfo blushed and disappeared quickly.
Rafe settled into the chair he’d left and handed the bottle back to Gregoric. “Your king is a fine young fellow. He’s on the way to becoming fierce and sharper than sharp.” Their eyes met. “And you too. I’d have not trusted me on the powders, either, especially with the paces I’ve put you through.”
Gregoric shrugged and was surprised at how easy his next words were. “I should’ve listened.” He took a drink and passed the bottle back. “So explain to me what we did?”
Rafe smiled. “You and your king helped me lay a regret to rest. I’ve returned the brooch I stole to finance the first Kinshark. I knew the moment I had it in my hands that I needed to take it home immediately. And you not listening to me gave me a few hours with my little sister that I didn’t know I needed to have.” He finished the bottle. “So there’s nothing there for you to regret. Learn your lesson and move on.”
Gregoric nodded. “Aye.”
Now Rafe regarded him and raised an eyebrow. “You also have family. A father and mother?”
Gregoric nodded. “And a son on the way.” He paused. “A bride, too.”
“And Rudolfo,” Rafe said.
“He’s more than family. He’s my king and my closest friend.”
“Yes and what are you to him? Do you know?”
Gregoric hesitated, and Rafe continued.
“You’re his anchor, Gregoric. You ground him.”
He nodded. Yes. He could see that.
“And he is your chain. When you’re buried in the muck of doing your job, he can lift you up if you let him.”
Gregoric looked from Rafe back to sky and sea that had become indistinguishable from one another. The pirate was right, of course. As much as Gregoric focu
sed on Rudolfo’s need for grounding, he needed to let the tie that bound their fates pull him up when the ground he was so good at going to swallowed him whole. Chains kept anchors from being lost and stuck.
For a moment, he was drugged and hazy on Rudolfo’s back and he heard his friend’s words again—that refrain that he suspected he’d go back to for the rest of his days as one of the more surreal assurances life had ever granted him. I will carry you, my friend.
Gregoric wasn’t sure what to make of their bit of piracy, but he knew it had changed him. And that more change lay ahead as they sailed for the Churning Wastes. There, men in dusty robes would pass over to them whatever bits of light long lost in darkness they had dug up in the ruins of the Old World. And then, they’d sail for home and fatherhood and Firstborn Feasts. If he had his way, he’d raise his son in peace among his family in the Ninefold Forest and in service to his friend. And one day, he’d tell his son all about the time he sailed with a pirate.
Rafe stood up and stretched. “Rest well, First Captain.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Gregoric replied.
And after Rafe Merrique slipped down the hatch and after Gregoric had checked to be certain no one was within earshot, he turned his eyes upon the stars that guttered to life above him.
“Far into the Ghosting Crests and beyond the Emerald Sea,” Gregoric sang softly to that sky, “I swear my sword to the pirate lord and a life of piracy.”
Gregoric, First Captain of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts, smiled and wondered what tomorrow might bring.
MEGAN LINDHOLM
I’VE ALWAYS LOVED HEARING THE “BEHIND THE SCENES” STORIES FROM friends in film. My dad was an extra in Captain Blood, the Errol Flynn one. He told me that the director had the extras swinging back and forth on ropes to appear as though they were jumping from rigging on one ship to another, as the production assistants dropped flaming pieces of canvas down around them. I’ve watched that movie more than once, hoping for a glimpse of him!
Reality television has become a fixture in our entertainment. I trace its roots back to the old quiz shows and live shows like Art Linkletter’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. Linkletter was an expert at getting kids to reveal rather embarrassing facts about their home lives, to the intense delight of the audience.
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