“But do you agree to the rest?”
“Why not? You proved at Salamander Castle that you excel when properly motivated. This agreement may make you a more willing pupil. But, of course, our bargain will be binding only if you discover who killed Gabriel before I do.” He let this sink in. It wasn’t likely that Petra could beat Dee in a race where all of his connections and experience would give him more than a head start.
But Petra had what she wanted: a chance.
She nodded. The oarsman looked at her with disapproval, but Petra ignored him, and he didn’t say anything, because he was used to being ignored.
14
On the Ratlines
NEEL SPUN a little golden hoop between his fingers. He had stolen it in Sallay, along with a bolt of crimson cloth for Sadie.
On the night the Pacolet left Sallay, almost two weeks ago, Neel had eaten almonds until his stomach cramped. Today, looking at his sister’s red cloth made him feel even worse. He remembered their farewell. While the rest of the Lovari praised Neel’s theft from the Bohemian prince, Sadie had been silent and furious. When she finally spoke, it was to say that she was staying in Prague.
Neel had teased her. He sang songs about a castle stablehand who must have stolen her heart (he didn’t realize that he might have been singing the truth). She grew angrier and angrier until finally the very intensity of her emotion made her laugh.
She hugged him. In a low voice, she said, “If you had been caught, they wouldn’t have just killed you.”
Neel wished she were here, not holed up in Salamander Castle, smuggling messages through white traders the Roma trusted. He missed her. Sadie was good. A bright flame that made everyone around her glow.
Neel didn’t feel like a good person.
He opened the earring.
Then a pair of feet appeared on the ladder leading from the hatch in the ceiling.
“Neel, what are you doing down here?” demanded Nadia. “You should be working with the rest of us.”
“You should be working on catching Brishen’s eye, ’cause that’ll never happen on its own,” he sneered. He set the pointed end of the open hoop against his left earlobe.
“You’ll get an infection if you do it like that,” said Nadia.
He pushed the earring through. He heard as well as felt the tiny pop when it went through his flesh. He pinched the hoop closed, and blotted the blood between his thumb and forefinger. His earlobe throbbed, but he didn’t mind. It felt as angry as the rest of him.
“My fire’s burning just fine, so why don’t you mind yours,” Neel told Nadia, using the Lovari expression.
“The Maraki don’t have campfires. We live on ships.”
“I’m not Maraki, and you know what I meant.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was rough in that way that some people have when the only way they can apologize is to harden themselves first. “I’m sorry for what I said the night before we reached Sallay. I didn’t mean it. It doesn’t matter who’s in which tribe. We’re both Roma.” She sat down on the hammock next to Neel’s. “I know what your problem is.”
He kept his expression carefully blank.
“It’s him,” said Nadia.
Neel collapsed into his hammock and covered his face. “I hate him,” he groaned.
“Then why is he on this ship? You’re the one who made us keep him.”
Neel knew that, and didn’t understand why all of his reasons for doing so now seemed pale and insignificant next to his resentment. It hadn’t been right to sell Tomik as a slave, and Neel could work with the gadje if he had to, just like when the two of them had plotted out the scrying in Sallay. But now this handsome white outsider, who also happened to be Petra’s oldest friend, was here to stay—and, to Neel’s dismay, Tomik had become the darling of the Pacolet.
At least Nadia didn’t seem too keen about him. “If I go on deck,” he asked her, “will you leave me alone?”
“Yes.” She reached into Tas’s kit and pulled out a bottle.
“What’re you—”
“Hold still,” she ordered, seizing Neel’s head. “Or you really will get an infection.” She uncorked the bottle with her teeth and poured alcohol on his ear.
He shrieked.
IT MIGHT BE SURPRISING that Tomik was a favorite aboard the Pacolet. After all, its sailors had been ready to sell him into slavery, and their captain was disgusted with him. Even as Treb set the course for England, he complained to anyone who would listen that the gadje had screwed up the scrying, and that if they were chasing a phantom instead of the Celestial Globe, it was all Tomik’s fault. But from the first day that Morocco disappeared on the horizon, the Maraki adored Tomik with that easy feeling that comes from being relieved of guilt.
They also saw that Tomik was dedicated. He learned Romany more quickly than anyone would have guessed. He studied the parts of the ship, and never stopped asking questions. At first the Maraki pretended to be annoyed by this, but they soon gave in to feeling flattered.
Tomik’s sunburn darkened into a tan, his hair was streaked into an even brighter gold, his laugh was open, and he seemed to have forgotten that the sailors had once been his captors. The only person Tomik avoided was Neel, which everyone thought was strange, since Neel had raged at, badgered, and insulted the Maraki into keeping him.
The Pacolet had left the Loophole Beach families in Sallay to make their own way in life, since independence was important to the Roma and the ship had been a temporary (and cramped) solution to their problems. Neel and Tomik then became the youngest people on board, if only by a couple of years. It is perhaps natural, then, that Tomik became the pet of the Maraki, who showed him the same affection they would have toward a puppy taking its wobbly steps.
It didn’t occur to Neel that he himself was treated differently because the Maraki considered him an equal.
While Neel was below deck, slapping the bottle out of Nadia’s hand and cursing her, Tomik was making a discovery.
There was little wind that day. After the Pacolet had left Morocco, it sailed west past the Canary Islands. The ship would eventually turn to the northeast and England, but not before it had sailed far out into the Western Ocean. This route meant that the Pacolet could take advantage of good currents and the trade winds, which made the journey faster. But you can’t trust the wind. It has its lazy days just like the rest of us.
Tomik had little to do. He stood next to the railing, sweat trickling down his back. He was hot and bored. He had offered to fish with the Maraki who weren’t working the sails, but they had waved him away, telling him to take a nap in the shipmates’ cabin. Tomik left them, but he didn’t go below deck. That’s where Neel was. Tomik looked at the empty blue sea and wondered what to do.
He didn’t want to think about his family and Petra. He knew the Stakans would worry and grieve. But he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t in danger—none that he knew of, at least. Still, Tomik would imagine his family in tears, and Attie howling at the door, and a wave of guilt would overcome him.
So he avoided remembering the Sign of Fire. He also tried not to think about Petra, because just as Treb worried that the Pacolet was sailing toward her and not the globe, Tomik feared that the opposite was true.
Tomik pulled the horseshoe necklace from underneath his shirt and studied it. Neel seemed to have forgotten about it. This surprised Tomik, because it was obvious that the trinket meant something to him. Tomik didn’t guess that this was exactly why the other boy acted as if it didn’t exist.
He flipped the horseshoe over. In tiny letters, and in a formal tone that was unusual for Neel, the horseshoe said, This is Petali Kronos. Be kind to her, for she is bound by blood to Indraneel of the Lovari.
Tomik didn’t understand all of this, but he understood what mattered.
“Blood,” he muttered, with a fresh flare of jealousy. “That’s nothing compared to thirteen years.”
Tomik trusted his friendship with Petra like he trusted his lungs
to breathe and his bones to bear the weight of his body. But reading the horseshoe made him feel like spoiling for a fight.
That was when Neel, who was feeling much the same way, slammed into Tomik’s shoulder as he strode across the deck.
Tomik’s chest hit the railing. He gasped in pain.
“’Scuse me,” said Neel sweetly, and kept walking.
“Guess I’m not surprised.” Tomik’s voice was quiet, but there was no wind, so it carried.
Neel turned to face him. “Say what you mean,” he said, switching from Czech to Romany. “If you can.”
“Walk away,” Tomik haltingly replied in Neel’s language. “Your gift.”
Neel stepped closer. “Speak more clearly, lambkin.”
“Bohemia—your fault.”
Neel laughed. “I’ve been blamed for many things, most of ’em true, but no one’s caught me ruining a whole country.”
Tomik shook his head.
“What happened in Bohemia is my fault?” Neel still had a smile on his face, but it was dangerous. “Which is what, exactly? Did your crops fail? Do you feel the need to blame some Gypsy for it? Or maybe you’re thinking of something a mite more personal? I know you can’t blame me for Petra, ’cause her getting attacked by the prince’s beasts happened on your watch, not mine. Wait—silly me, here I’m assuming that you have some kind of watch, that you might look out for her, since you’re supposed to be her friend. But I can’t help remembering that you were nowhere in Prague when she was alone and needed someone, and found me.”
Tomik shook his head again. He summoned all of his concentration to make what he had to say count, and cut deep. “No. Roma, on Loophole Beach. All Bohemia. That is your fault. Why prince lock up Roma? You stole. Prince search you. You are—you make mess. You walk away.”
The Maraki weren’t sure who threw the first punch, but no sooner had the words left Tomik’s mouth than he and Neel were a yelling, twisting mass of limbs.
Two hands reached in, grasped both boys by their hair, and yanked them apart.
“A nightmare, that’s what this is,” said Treb. “I keep thinking I have an extra purse of gold and a cousin with brains, and then I realize I’ve got this.” He shook the boys and they winced. “Neel, why are you more trouble when you actually get your way? This mess is your fault.”
“It isn’t!” he shouted, not realizing that Treb hadn’t heard the whole exchange between him and Tomik. Treb was referring to their fight, nothing more.
Treb released them, and they staggered.
“Go to the crow’s nest, both of you,” he said. “You can yowl at each other all you like up there.”
“Treb!” Neel protested.
“Don’t whine at me, coz. I know you can’t stand him. I can’t stand him. But if you won’t learn how to hate and be silent about it, then shimmy on up there and get it out of your system and out of my way!”
Tomik didn’t understand this conversation. The Romany words were said too quickly. But he couldn’t miss what was expected when Treb hauled him up by his shoulders and set him on the ratlines, the ladderlike structure made from ropes that stretched from the deck to the top of the mainmast.
Treb pointed to the sky. “Up.”
“Maybe he’ll fall,” Neel said hopefully.
Treb reached for him.
“Don’t get grabby with me!” Neel leaped for the bottom rung of the ratlines. “I’m going!” He swung himself up and began to mount the ropes, passing Tomik.
Every day on the Pacolet, Tomik had seen sailors climb the ratlines to reach the sails on each of the two masts. The sails were square-shaped, and grew smaller as they neared the top. Neel passed the course sail. He looked back. “Careful!” he called. “Or you’ll go splat and dead!”
Tomik decided that he didn’t like heights.
The rope creaked beneath his hands and feet. He followed Neel, and began to climb along the topsail. The rocking of the boat grew more violent the higher he went, and the crow’s nest still looked like a brown speck he would never reach.
Tomik squeezed the rough rope until it began to blister his palms. His right leg shook with the strain of his fear. The deck was far below. He froze.
Neel clambered inside the crow’s nest and looked down. “I spy a coward!”
Tomik lunged ahead. His foot slipped, sending his leg into space. The rope snagged the back of his knee. Tomik straightened, caught his breath, and continued to climb. The ratlines angled closer to the mast now, and he climbed past the topgallant sail.
Tomik hauled himself into the crow’s nest, which was little more than an open wooden barrel, and he collapsed on the floor.
Neel was lounging—as much as the small space would let him. The crow’s nest tilted back and forth. “Remember,” he said, “we still got to go back down.”
Tomik glared.
“It gets easier,” Neel said, his voice losing its mocking edge. “A fellow can get used to anything.”
Tomik stood up and leaned over the edge of the barrel. The deck below looked like a slipper. The horizon was a hazy line. His pulse was just beginning to slow when a seagull flew by and dropped a white-green glob on his head.
Neel roared. His entire body trembled with laughter, and tears leaked out of his eyes.
“It’s not funny,” Tomik said.
“Is—too—” gasped Neel.
Tomik considered chucking Neel out of the crow’s nest, but then was struck by how absurd this situation was. He knew he looked ridiculous, with gull droppings oozing through his hair. And Neel did, too, squirming with giggles. In spite of himself, Tomik smiled.
He sat down next to Neel. “I don’t really think it’s your fault.”
Neel stopped laughing. “I don’t either.”
“I just said that about Loophole Beach to make you mad.”
“Well, it worked.”
“But I still don’t like you.”
“Oh, Tom.” Neel wiped away his tears. “Warn me the next time you’re gonna break my heart.”
TOMIK WASN’T SURE how long they were up there. He didn’t doze off, but he didn’t feel awake either. The crow’s nest rocked, and every time Tomik opened his eyes he was surprised by how far he was from his village and everything he knew.
“We’re going down,” Neel said abruptly.
“We are?” Tomik replied, still dreamy.
“Yeah.”
The wind had come back, though it was gentle. It fluttered through Tomik’s hair as they climbed down the ratlines. Neel was right—this did get easier, and by the time Tomik’s feet hit the solid wood of the deck, he was steady.
Kiran was nearby, gutting a fish. He tossed the bloody sac of organs overboard and looked at Tomik. “Well done.”
That was all anyone would ever say about Tomik’s first time on the ratlines, because the entire ship was about to prepare for battle.
Neel raced across the deck, heading aft. He reached Treb and Andras. “I think we’re being followed.”
Treb pulled the pipe from his mouth. “What makes you say that?”
Neel pointed at a dot on the water.
“Hmm,” said Treb.
“Might be nothing,” said Andras.
“Might be. Might not.”
“You bet it’s not,” said Neel. “They’ve been following our path for a few hours now.”
Treb frowned. “I don’t have time for pirate games.”
“The ocean’s a big place,” said Andras. “We can outrace them.”
“We’ll leave ’em in our chop,” Neel agreed.
“In this wind?” Treb scoffed. “It’s as soft as a lady’s breath. Depending on what kind of ship that is, she could gain on us. We can’t risk engaging an enemy ship. With the Terrestrial Globe on board . . .”
The three of them looked at one another.
Treb narrowed his eyes. “Did someone blab our secret in Sallay?”
Andras was stern. “What do you think?”
Neel suddenly rem
embered the goatherd. “Well, it wasn’t me!”
“Neel,” threatened Treb, “if I’ve got a reason to, I’ll hoist you up into the rigging by your toes.”
“That ship,” said Andras, looking over their shoulders, “is definitely gaining.”
“If they want the globe, it could be to our advantage,” said Treb. “They won’t risk firing on us. Any ship that holds the globe would be too valuable to sink. If they’re after our prize, they’ll pull up alongside the Pacolet and board her. They’ll try to cut us down one by one with swords. But if they’re your average pirates, we can expect cannon fire. We’ll give ’em as good as we get.”
“They could be friendly,” said Andras.
“In these waters?”
“We shouldn’t sink a ship if it means us no harm.”
Treb snorted. “Were you always this soft?”
“They could even be Maraki,” argued Andras. “We can’t see what flag they’re flying.”
Treb paused, considering.
Andras pointed at a far-off knot of dark blue. “There’s a storm coming. The wind’ll pick up.”
“Right,” Treb said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Neel, set up the drogue. We’ll let them believe we’re a slow ship run by inexperienced sailors. They’ll get close, and we’ll see what they’re all about. If we’re being chased for the globe, we’d better find out that our secrets are not as safe as we think. We will not let them board. Andras, get Garil to ready the cannons.”
Andras started to walk away.
Treb called, “Tell him to aim them high!”
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Tomik asked Neel.
“Nothing.”
Tomik scanned the crew. They were bristling with swords. “Nothing looks a lot like something.”
“Then maybe you ought to get below deck and stop pestering me with questions you know the answers to.”
“I can figure out what’s going on. What I want”—Tomik crossed his arms—“is details. And my knife.”
The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II Page 12