Blue Sea Burning

by Geoff Rodkey

  ONCE WE’D EATEN our fill, it was past dark. Burns sent a crew of able-bodied men up the hill to keep watch on the pirates we’d left at the temple ruin, bottled up and roaring in helpless fury. Eventually, they’d be sent to Edgartown to face justice, and things weren’t likely to go well for them at trial.

  The rest of the crowd was heading home. A heavy quiet had settled over Blisstown—Millicent’s speech might have had something to do with that, but mostly I think it had just dawned on everyone that although the pirates were no longer a threat, they’d left an awful mess. And it was going to take a long time and a lot of trouble to get Sunrise back on its feet.

  But none of that was my problem. For the first time in ages, I didn’t have any problems—no one to run from or to, no one to fight against or about, no one to stop or save from anything.

  And every time my eyes met Millicent’s, she smiled at me—with that wonderful, warm smile that was all I’d ever wanted in the world.

  I didn’t know if what my friends and I had done was worth ten million gold. But I didn’t care anymore. Millicent’s smile was worth ten million to me. And for the moment, nothing else mattered.

  While we were eating, Mrs. Pembroke’s small army of servants were hard at work getting her carriage untangled from the crush of wagons and horses along Heavenly Road. When we were finished, all we had to do was climb inside for the trip up the hill to Cloud Manor.

  The mansion had been sacked, but not as badly as it could’ve been. And a wagonload of servants had gotten there ahead of us, so by the time we dragged ourselves up the wide central staircase, there were rooms waiting with soft beds and clean sheets. Someone asked me if I wanted a warm bath, but I was too tired to even answer. I sank my head onto a feather pillow and fell blissfully asleep.

  I WOKE UP in a room bathed in red from the morning sunlight that flooded through the curtainless windows.

  As I headed downstairs, the house was so silent and peaceful that I winced when the creak of the wooden steps under my feet echoed in the entry hall. At the bottom of the stairs, I got a whiff of fresh-baked jelly bread and quickened my pace.

  The light in the kitchen was as red as my room. Mrs. Pembroke was sitting at the corner nook, drinking a cup of tea. The jelly bread was cooling in a pan next to a short stack of plates and forks.

  She smiled at me. “Good morning,” she said in a near-whisper. I guess she didn’t want to break the silence, either.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She picked up a spatula to cut me a slice of jelly bread. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She stood up, motioning for me to sit. Then she went to fetch a teacup.

  I sat down in front of the jelly bread. It was heavenly. I don’t know what they did to it at Cloud Manor that was any different from the bakeries in Edgartown or Blisstown, but the jelly bread at the Pembrokes’ beat them all.

  Mrs. Pembroke set a hot cup of tea in front of me.

  “Are the others still asleep?”

  I nodded.

  “You should be, too. You must be exhausted.”

  “Maybe I’ll go back to bed. If that’s okay.”

  “I think . . . ,” she said with a smile, “that whatever you want to do is okay. For a good long time.”

  I felt a lump in my throat, and I knew I had to change the subject in a hurry or I might start to cry from how nice she was.

  “Why is the light so red?” I asked. “It’s awfully strange.”

  “It is,” she said, nodding, and then looked out the window. “Started a few days ago. I think it’s got something to do with the volcano.”

  The volcano. I’d forgotten all about it. I could feel the worry start to creep up through my belly.

  “Did it really erupt? Or was it just smoking?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Is there a difference?”

  “Sometimes it smokes and spits, but that’s it,” I told her.

  “It’s never smoked like this,” she said. “Not since I’ve lived on Sunrise.”

  “My brother’s on Deadweather,” I said.

  “Oh, dear!” She put a hand to her mouth. Then she reached out and placed her other hand over mine. “I’m so sorry. What can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I felt like I had to do something. But I couldn’t think of what.

  “Wait—” She stood up quickly. “Thomas just came up the hill. He said there was a ship—THOMAS!”

  Her voice echoed across the house. There were footsteps, and a moment later a servant entered.

  “Yes’m?”

  “Did you say there was a ship coming into the harbor this morning? From the south?”

  “Yes’m. She docked just after sunrise. I saw her from the wagon as I headed up the shore road, and—”

  “Any chance it was a Deadweather ship?”

  He thought about it. “Might’ve been. Certainly looked grimy enough.” He nodded apologetically at me. “Beggin’ pardon, sir.”

  Mrs. Pembroke turned to me. “Most of our sea traffic comes from the north and east. If it’s coming from the south, mightn’t it be from Deadweather?”

  I nodded. “Could be. That’s how we always came here. From around South Point.” I started wolfing down the jelly bread as fast as I could.

  “I can take you down the hill to check it out,” Thomas offered. “Soon as the horses are fed and watered.”

  “How long would that be?” I asked.

  “About an hour.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can walk.” On foot, I could be there in twenty minutes.

  I washed down the last of the jelly bread with the tea. Then I stood up.

  “You sure you don’t want a ride?” Mrs. Pembroke asked. “Thomas can—”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said.

  “Wait—take some money. Just in case you need something.”

  I TOOK A SHORTCUT through the neighboring properties and into the woods, Mrs. Pembroke’s silver jingling in my pocket as I trotted downhill.

  If Adonis isn’t on the ship . . .

  Someone in town might know what happened . . .

  I could hire a boat to Port Scratch . . .

  I reached the shore road and turned down it, toward the harbor.

  What if he IS on the ship?

  I’d have to invite him back to Cloud Manor. And he was a terrible houseguest.

  In an instant, I went from praying Adonis would turn up safe to hoping he was safe but somewhere far away, where my friends and I wouldn’t have to put up with him.

  Maybe my uncle could find him a job. Or maybe Deadweather’s fine after all, and he didn’t need to leave. Or maybe—

  Someone’s coming up the road.

  Maybe it’s Adonis!

  No, it’s just an old man.

  HE LIMPED AS HE WALKED, his left arm hanging useless in a dirty sling and his back so bent that the overstuffed satchel hanging from his good shoulder threatened to slip off and fall to the ground. He wore a nobleman’s clothes, but they were so filthy it looked like he’d dug them out of a hole in the ground before he put them on.

  Or someone had dug him out of a hole in the ground.

  Poor fellow. Ripper’s pirates must have treated him rough.

  As the distance closed between us, I saw his chin jerk up in surprise at the sight of me. He straightened his back, squaring his shoulders, and I realized he was much taller than he’d seemed.

  Then his ragged, salt-and-pepper whiskers split apart to reveal a line of white teeth.

  I’d just put a smile on his face.

  Another grateful Sunriser. I bet he’s going to hug me.

  He was digging in his satchel.

  Savior’s sake, he’s going to give me a present!

  I could get used to th
is hero business.

  I was almost upon him. His head was down, searching his pack. I stopped to wait.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly.

  He finally found what he was looking for.

  He raised his head, and I saw his ice-blue eyes for the first time as he drew the pistol and pointed it at my chest.

  The grin on his dirty face slowly spread from ear to ear.

  “And here I thought my luck had run out,” said Roger Pembroke.

  CHAPTER 35

  The Rowboat

  “DOWN THE STEPS.”

  We were standing on the cliff above the cove where the slave ship had docked. Pembroke was behind me. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d turned me around, ordered me off the road, and started marching me uphill through the trees with a warning that if I opened my mouth or made any kind of noise, he’d shoot me in the head.

  What I couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t shot me already.

  I started down the steps, trying not to look at the dizzying plunge to my left—or at the distant lump at the bottom of the stairs that was Birch’s body.

  When I reached the bottom, I hurried past the body without a second look.

  I could hear Pembroke’s footsteps pause behind me.

  “Well, that should make you happy,” he said. “Keep going.”

  I ducked under the archway that led to the dark inner cove.

  “All the way to the back.”

  The slave ship and Cyril’s boat were both long gone, and at first I thought the cove was empty. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized it extended much farther back than I’d noticed before. I walked along the platform cut into the rock, passing the series of iron cleats where the ships had been tied up. Beyond them, several large storage trunks were lined up against the side of the platform.

  Just in front of the back wall, hanging on davits from the ceiling over the water, was a small rowboat.

  “Get the boat in the water.”

  I did as I was told. While I was wrestling with the rowboat, I could hear Pembroke banging around in the storage trunks.

  When I heard iron clanking behind me. I risked a glance over my shoulder.

  “Did I say turn around? Get it in the water!”

  I managed to do as I was told.

  “Tie it up.”

  I wound the bow rope around a cleat at the edge of the platform.

  “Now, hold still.”

  I heard the clanking iron again, coming closer.

  Something cold and hard struck me on the ankle.

  Then I heard a heavy click and felt a weight press on the top of my foot. As I looked down, I felt the cold weight against my other ankle. There was a second click.

  He’d shackled my legs with the same kind of chain I’d taken off the Okalu slaves.

  “Get in the boat. And mind you don’t fall in the water. The chains will drown you.”

  I somehow managed to tumble into the boat.

  “Take the rear seat. Turn around. Back to me. That’s it.”

  The boat bobbed, lightly at first, then sharply.

  “Turn and face me.”

  I did. He’d settled into the bow seat, facing forward with the pistol still trained on me. There was a burlap sack at his feet, stuffed with who knows what.

  “Start rowing.”

  I got the oars in their locks and started to row. With all the bruises around my ribs, rowing hurt like a demon, but I managed to maneuver us out of the cove and into the open water. The boat lurched against the rough sea.

  The plume from the volcano was smeared across the sky in front of me, thick and angry.

  “Did I tell you to stop?”

  “No,” I said. “But you didn’t tell me which way to go, either.”

  “Deadweather Island. And be quick about it.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’d like to get there while it still exists.”

  I started to row.

  But it didn’t make any sense.

  “It’ll take days to row there.”

  “Not days. Not if you’re quick about it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you’re going to lead me through the Valley of the Choke Plants, to the Red Cliff—do those names ring a bell?”

  “Yes. They’re from the map.”

  “And do you know where they are? Can you find them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. Once we’re there, you can dig me a treasure. Perhaps I’ll join you, if I’m feeling up to it.” He raised his wounded arm a few inches in its sling.

  It still didn’t make any sense.

  “The Fist isn’t magic,” I told him. “You said so yourself. It’s—”

  “I don’t need magic. I need money. And the dowry of the Dawn Princess ought to be just the thing.”

  “What if we can’t find it?”

  “Then it won’t be for lack of effort. Come, now—I’m sure you can row harder than that.”

  I did my best. But the chop in the water was pushing the boat back.

  And he was wrong. It’d take days to row to Deadweather.

  Smoke was still pouring from the volcano.

  This is madness.

  “But the volcano—”

  “—makes our destination rather hard to miss, doesn’t it? So you needn’t worry about getting lost.”

  “It’ll kill us.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t say that bothers me. Truth is, I’ve had quite a run of poor luck lately. Rolled the dice on a rather large gamble and crapped out. So much so that when I loaded this gun, the target I had in mind—”

  He raised the pistol to his head. “Was me.”

  He frowned and gave the pistol a little jerk, pretending to fire it.

  “But then you came along.” His eyes brightened, and the frown became a smile. “And I realized the Savior Himself had picked up the dice and put them back in my hand for one last throw.”

  The pistol was pointing at me again.

  “Now: is the treasure really there? Is the volcano going to blow? Are we rowing toward certain death? I can see as how these questions might be important to you. But personally, I don’t care a fig. As a practical matter, boy—I’m already dead.”

  He settled back in his seat with a pleasant sigh. “And this is my play for resurrection.”

  I ROWED FOR A WHILE in silence, trying to make sense of it.

  “You need money?” I asked him.

  “Rather desperately, yes.”

  “But you’re the richest man I know.”

  “Was. Mmm. Had a tidy little fortune, I did.” He got a wistful look on his face. “A lesser man would have been more than satisfied with that. Not me. I had grander dreams. And they — near came true. If I’d pulled it off, they would have written about me in the history books. This whole part of the world would have been mine.”

  He sat up, suddenly animated, and leaned in toward me as he gestured with his pistol at the western sky, in the direction of the New Lands. “Do you have any idea how much undeveloped potential is in those lands? It’s a continent full of riches! With free labor as far as the eye can see! And nobody’s got the vision to build it out beyond a couple of petty gold mines. Except me.”

  He sighed and shook his head. I was about to point out that what he called “free labor,” most people called “slaves”—but then he was talking again, too fast for me to interrupt.

  “But when you’re surrounded by small-minded, fearful little men with no ambition but to hang on to what they’ve got, and no appetite for risk, no matter how great the rewards—well, you’ve got to do it all yourself, don’t you? Pay for the troops, pay for the ships, pay for the guns, pay for the food—and even then—even then!—they all want bribes under the table and ironclad guarantees o
f a fat cut if you pull it off, and Savior save you if the going gets rough, because they’ll all run like rats and leave you to twist in the wind.”

  His eyes narrowed, simmering with resentment, and I thought he was finished. Then he exploded again.

  “And I was so close! So — close! If I’d only held Pella a few more weeks, until the gold trains came in . . . it would have been all over. I would have won. If that blustering pig Li Homaya hadn’t shown up out of nowhere . . . And it was all your fault! Bloody — hell! It was all your fault!”

  He was spitting rage, waving the gun at my face, and I shrank back from him, wondering how he could’ve known I’d tipped off Li Homaya.

  “If your fool of an uncle hadn’t run off on me and taken his men with him, I could’ve beaten back those Short-Ears without breaking a sweat.”

  The rage ebbed away. He sank back in his seat and gave a heavy sigh as he looked down at his injured arm. “Still can’t figure out how on earth Li Homaya wound up coming at me from the north.”

  I was wrong. He didn’t know.

  I sent them. I sent Li Homaya to stop you. And it worked.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “Nothing.”

  He scowled at me for a moment, then went back to his brooding.

  “A hundred more men, and I could’ve held that city. Fifty, if they’d had any fight in them . . . Fifty good men, I’d be there still. That simp Burns and the rest of the king’s lackeys would be falling all over themselves to kiss my ring. Instead of scurrying around, trying to cover their rears by hanging the blame on me . . . I mean, the sheer — insanity of it! The way they spoke to me this morning! I’d barely set foot on the dock—”

  The rage was boiling up again. “My dock! I built that dock! I built that whole — town from scratch! Everything they’ve got came out of my hard labor! And the whole lot of them . . .

  “It’s not just the ingratitude. It’s the incompetence! Such a pack of bumbling idiots, I can’t even leave town for a month without seeing the whole place sacked! By a single — ship! Ripper Jones? He’s an oaf! The man can’t buckle his belt without an instruction manual! And they let him waltz in and burn down half the town? —! Savior’s —!”