The Skeleton Coast

by Mardi McConnochie

Pod and Essie spoke over each other.

  ‘Either she’s escaped, or the pirates have her,’ Will said. ‘Either way, we can’t stick around here and let the Admiralty work out who we really are. Right now, they think we’re just stupid civilians. But that’s the same boat that was here looking for Spinner—for all we know, Beckett himself could be aboard. As soon as those marines get back to their own vessel and make their report, someone might begin to figure it out. We’ve got to get away from here before they come back for us.’

  ‘But if Annalie really has been kidnapped, wouldn’t the Admiralty have a better chance of finding her than we will?’ Essie asked.

  ‘Do you want us all to get arrested?’ Will said.

  ‘I want her not to be dead!’ Essie shot back.

  ‘We’ll think of a way to get her back,’ Will said. ‘But we can’t do anything if Beckett’s got us locked up.’

  ‘What if she did escape?’ Essie persisted. ‘How will she know how to find us?’

  ‘Do you really think she escaped?’ Will asked.

  Essie shrugged unhappily. ‘She might have…’

  ‘More likely someone saw their chance, grabbed a hostage and ran,’ Pod said gloomily.

  ‘Either way,’ Will said, ‘we can’t hang round here any longer. I don’t want either of them finding us again—pirates or Admiralty.’

  Pod nodded his agreement and so, reluctantly, did Essie.

  ‘I’ll get the sails up,’ Pod said. ‘Essie, you should go and check on Graham.’

  ‘Wait,’ Will said, ‘what happened to Graham?’

  Graham

  ‘Graham?’ Essie called. ‘Are you okay?’

  She crunched over the broken glass, looking around. There was no sign of him. ‘The pirates are gone now,’ she called, ‘and so are the Admiralty. We’re safe. There’s no one here but us.’

  She heard a caw from one of the cabins.

  A cupboard door creaked open as she walked in. She hurried over; Graham had pushed it open with his beak but could manage no more. The pirate’s knife had sliced into his wing, which was hanging at an odd angle, dark with blood.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’ she said, reaching for him, but Graham snapped at her. Essie quickly pulled her hand away. ‘Tell you what, I’ll go and fetch the first aid kit and send Pod down,’ she said.

  Pod came soon enough, and picked Graham up tenderly. ‘You’ve been in the wars,’ he murmured. ‘How’s that wing? Does it hurt?’

  ‘Course it hurts!’ Graham rasped.

  ‘Think you can fly?’

  Graham shook his head no.

  Pod looked at the wound and didn’t like what he saw. It was deep, and if it had cut through vital muscles or ligaments, Graham might never fly again. ‘Let’s bandage this up, for starters,’ he said.

  Pod, assisted by Essie, bandaged the wing, while Graham winced and swore at them. When he was done, Pod found him a biscuit. ‘You’re a brave old bird,’ he said, ‘taking on that pirate. He was one scary guy.’

  ‘Graham not scared,’ Graham said. ‘Pod fight, Graham fight, too.’

  ‘Next time, pick on someone your own size,’ Pod said.

  ‘Next time, pick fight with bird,’ Graham said, nibbling on his biscuit, his eyes drooping with fatigue.

  ‘We’ll let you get some rest,’ Pod said.

  ‘He doesn’t look too good,’ Essie said quietly, as they left the cabin.

  ‘I know,’ Pod said. ‘I wish we could find him a bird doctor.’

  ‘You mean a vet?’ Essie said. ‘Where would we find one around here?’

  Pod shrugged.

  Will had set a course for the east, across the Sea of Brundisi, away from the pirates who’d attacked them and also, he hoped, away from the Admiralty ship. ‘Well?’ he asked, as Pod and Essie reappeared on deck. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Knife wound,’ Pod said. ‘It’s bad.’

  ‘Going-to-die bad?’

  ‘Hopefully not,’ Pod said. ‘But possibly notable-to-fly bad if we don’t get him looked at.’

  ‘Looked at?’ Will echoed. ‘Around here?’ He gestured back towards the Brundisi shore. ‘I don’t reckon there’s a lot of neighbourhood vets in Dio. Not a lot of cats and dogs needing their claws clipped.’

  ‘You asked,’ Pod said stubbornly. ‘I’m telling you.’

  ‘You do remember that’s not our only problem, don’t you?’ Will said. ‘We still have to find Annalie.’

  ‘I thought you had a plan,’ Pod said.

  ‘Of course I don’t have a plan,’ Will said crossly. ‘I just knew we had to get out of the last mess before we work out how to get ourselves out of the next one!’

  They all turned to look back at the vast, sprawling, hostile cityscape, veiled by a smoky haze. Annalie was in there somewhere, but so were the pirates, and so were the Admiralty.

  ‘Maybe we can try and get in contact with Spinner’s friend’s people,’ Pod said. ‘They might know what to do—who to ask—’

  ‘Vesh’s place just got blown up by the Admiralty, remember?’ Will said. ‘I saw it burn to the ground. Maybe Vesh had friends here, I assume he did, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to get in touch with them now. We’ll just have to think of some other way to find Annalie.’

  ‘Did she have her shell on her?’ Pod asked.

  ‘I’ll check,’ Essie said, and ran down to the cabin to check. Bad news—she returned, holding it.

  ‘We can’t find her that way,’ Will said. ‘And she can’t contact us either.’

  For a moment, they were all sunk in gloom. Then Essie said, ‘Hang on, we don’t have to work out how to find her. They’ll contact us. They want a ransom, right? As soon as they start looking for money, she’ll tell them to call us.’

  ‘Yeah, but then what?’ said Pod.

  ‘Well, then we just try and get her back,’ Essie said.

  ‘How?’ Will said.

  ‘Maybe we just have to give them some money.’

  ‘We’ve got almost no money left,’ Will said. ‘Your dad’s creditstream’s been blocked and they’re monitoring his communications. If you go to him for money, they’ll be able to track us.’

  ‘I know,’ Essie admitted, and frowned. ‘But there’s got to be a way. Here’s another problem, though.’ She held up her shell. ‘No signal. The kidnappers can’t get in touch with us while we’re out at sea.’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry to go back to Dio,’ Will said.

  ‘Isn’t there some safer bit up or down the coast somewhere?’ Pod asked.

  Will shrugged eloquently. ‘One bit’s as dangerous as another if you don’t know where you’re going.’

  ‘What about Gantua?’ Essie suggested. ‘There’s signal, there are services, they don’t have any pirates. We can probably track down a vet for Graham, too.’

  Gantua was Brundisi’s eastern neighbour, but the two countries had very little in common. Gantua and Brundisi spoke different languages and practised different religions. A tall mountain range partially separated them; for centuries, they had invaded one another as various dynasties waxed and waned. In the years leading up to the Flood, rain continued to fall on the Gantuan side of the mountains, but stopped on the Brundisan side. After the Flood, the Gantuans had eagerly joined forces with the Admiralty. Gantua, as a consequence, was still a functioning state, while Brundisi was a failed state.

  ‘They got pirates there?’ Pod asked.

  ‘Nope, no pirates,’ Will said. He looked at the others. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘It feels kind of weird sailing off and leaving Annalie behind,’ Essie said.

  ‘We’re not leaving her, exactly,’ Will said. ‘We’re putting ourselves in a position where we can actually do something to help her.’

  ‘We’ll be a long way away if she needs us in a hurry,’ Pod said soberly. ‘But we need to get help for Graham. We can’t fix him by ourselves.’

  ‘We’ll go to Gantua, find a vet, and try to come up with a plan,’ Will sai
d, trying to sound more confident than he felt. ‘We’ll get her back. I know we can.’

  Kidnapped

  Annalie did not normally get seasick. But she did not normally ride over bouncing waves, pressed into the bottom of a metal dinghy, with her hands tied behind her back and a bag over her head either. The longer the ride went on, the more nauseated she got, and the more bruised she felt from being slammed unpredictably against the bottom of the dinghy. Red Bandana had hidden her under a tarp and given her very stern instructions which she couldn’t understand but which she guessed probably meant ‘Don’t come out until I tell you’. He kept his foot on her for good measure. She lay there, hot, bruised, gasping for breath, growing sicker and sicker. Just as she was beginning to think she could not bear it for another second, she heard the engine throttling back; the bouncing slowed to a gentle cruise, and then the dinghy slowed and stopped.

  The tarp was thrown back, although the bag over her head stayed in place. She was pulled to her feet, the dinghy rocking wildly beneath her. More hands steadied and hauled her onto solid ground. She guessed she was standing on some sort of wooden boardwalk; yesterday, as she travelled through the waterlogged outskirts of Dio she’d noticed rickety wooden walkways built above the high tide level, which meant that people could move between the upper storeys of these buildings, even though water lapped at their lower floors. She was pushed, stumbling, along the walkway and then into a maze-like interior with many twists and turns, layered with different smells: unfamiliar cooking, seawater, mildew. She heard a bolt being shot, and at last, the bag was taken from her head. She barely caught a glimpse of a dark nondescript corridor before Red Bandana pushed her through a door and slammed it shut again.

  ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘Aren’t you going to untie me?’

  The only answer she got was the sound of the bolt being shot and padlocked again.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you with that,’ a voice said.

  Annalie turned and saw a young man with fair hair and a round face getting to his feet. She gasped in shock when she saw him, and not just because the side of his head and his jacket were spattered with dark, dried blood. He was also dressed in the uniform of a first year Admiralty officer.

  ‘I’m Lieutenant Cherry,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

  Someone always pays

  Annalie stared at him. ‘Leila,’ she said, lying on instinct.

  ‘Let’s see if I can get you untied,’ he said.

  She offered him her wrists, and he worked on the rope until he could get the knots undone. The relief when she could move her arms again was enormous. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ she said. She turned to look at him. ‘What happened to your head?’

  He put a hand up to touch it, a rueful look on his face. ‘I got separated from my unit. I’m a bit unclear about what actually happened—I think someone conked me on the head, and the next thing I knew, I was here.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘Did they get you a doctor?’

  ‘Nothing like that. Why—does it look serious?’

  ‘It’s very gory.’

  ‘I think head wounds often are. I don’t think it’s life-threatening, luckily for me. No double vision or anything. Too bad if there was, eh? Most of them don’t seem to speak Duxish.’

  Annalie’s initial shock and fear at being trapped with an Admiralty officer—someone she had come to think of as her enemy—began to fade. Lieutenant Cherry seemed pleasant and straightforward, and visibly relieved to have company.

  ‘What are they planning to do with us?’ she asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Well, I assume they’re holding us for ransom,’ Cherry said. ‘Not that it will do them much good in my case.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The Admiralty doesn’t pay pirates.’

  ‘How are they going to get you back, then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cherry said. ‘I expect there’s a policy, but I don’t know what it is yet.’ He paused. ‘This is my first year at sea.’

  ‘Oh,’ Annalie said. ‘That’s very bad luck.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Cherry replied glumly.

  Annalie lowered her voice slightly, in case someone was listening. ‘So what kind of people do you think we’re dealing with? Are they violent? Are they crazy? Or are they just interested in money?’

  Cherry considered this. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘They’ve fed me, and no one’s threatened me or beaten me up—apart from when they captured me. But if they don’t get what they want, that could change.’

  Annalie thought back to what she’d seen on the boat. The pirates who’d attacked them had seemed determined and disciplined, definitely not amateurs. She guessed that they’d done this many times before. She just wished she knew a bit more about how situations like this ended up.

  ‘What happens to people who get kidnapped by pirates, usually?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, that depends,’ Cherry said. ‘If you’ve got family or friends back home who can pay the ransom, I think they usually let you go.’

  ‘And what if you don’t?’ Annalie asked.

  Cherry screwed his face up.

  Annalie’s heart sank.

  The pirates left them alone for some time. Eventually, food came: a small bowl of rice each with a few vegetables on top, no cutlery to eat it with, and a mug of sour-tasting tea.

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ Cherry confided, eating heartily. He had the look of a young man with a big appetite. His food was gone very quickly.

  The sun shining through the gap in the window passed over and the room grew gloomier.

  They heard more footsteps outside the door. The man who’d brought the food took the bowls away, and then Red Bandana looked in, pointed at Annalie, and with a jerk of his head indicated that she should follow him.

  She looked at Cherry fearfully. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said reassuringly.

  Red Bandana escorted Annalie down a winding corridor and into a lounge room furnished with low squashy sofas and many colourful rugs and cushions. Five lavishly-moustached Brundisan men of various ages were lounging on the sofas and talking amongst themselves; they all turned to look at her curiously when she walked in. Red Bandana left her standing in the middle of the floor and sat down between an older man and a boy.

  He spoke, and the boy translated. ‘Where are you from, and what is your name?’

  She could have lied to the pirates, but if they were making ransom demands, how would it help if she pretended to be someone else?

  ‘Annalie Wallace,’ she said. ‘I’m from Dux.’

  Red Bandana and the older man spoke to one another, and the boy translated. ‘Do you have a family who want you back?’

  ‘Yes,’ Annalie said.

  ‘If they want you back, they must pay,’ the boy said.

  ‘My family isn’t rich,’ Annalie explained.

  The men laughed when the boy translated this.

  ‘Everyone in Dux is rich. People in Brundisi are poor,’ the boy said.

  ‘I don’t have a rich family,’ Annalie said.

  ‘You have a boat,’ the boy said.

  Annalie wondered if that meant the pirates hadn’t taken the Sunfish after all. Could the others have got away? ‘I had a boat,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who’s got it now.’

  ‘You have a boat, you have money,’ the boy said. ‘You can pay a ransom.’

  Annalie realised the boy’s previous remark didn’t reveal anything about the current status of the Sunfish. All it showed was the assumption they’d made about her, based on the fact that she’d been taken from a privately owned boat. ‘Okay, sure,’ she said. ‘If you’ll just give me a shell I can—’

  ‘You don’t call,’ said the boy. ‘We call. You give us names now.’

  Of course they were not going to let her make the call herself.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of names to give you,’ she said. She
turned to Red Bandana. ‘Your people had my friends. I don’t know what happened to them after you took me off the boat.’

  Red Bandana looked affronted at being addressed directly. He looked at the boy for a translation then snapped something. The boy said, ‘You don’t worry about them. You just give us names.’

  ‘Okay,’ Annalie said. There were only two names she could give them. She gave them Essie’s call ID first, then Spinner’s, even though she knew there was little chance of them getting through to him. She just had to hope that Essie wasn’t locked up in another room like this one—or worse.

  ‘What happens if you can’t get hold of them?’ she asked. ‘Or they can’t pay?’

  ‘You don’t leave here until someone pays,’ the boy said. ‘In the end, someone always pays.’

  Doria

  Will, Pod and Essie sailed with all speed for Gantua. They had good winds all the way, and saw no further signs of pirates.

  Will’s first thought had been to go ashore in the busy port city of Haal, but as they approached, he spotted an Admiralty ship even larger than the one they’d seen in Dio coming in to port. He got the binoculars out and discovered that Haal was home to an Admiralty base, similar in size to the one back in his hometown of Port Fine, and it had a second Admiralty ship already at anchor. Haal was clearly not an option.

  They checked the charts, looking for somewhere else to go.

  ‘Ooh—Doria!’ said Essie.

  ‘We’re not going there,’ Will said sternly.

  ‘Too dangerous?’ asked Pod.

  ‘No, it’s supposed to be beautiful,’ Essie said wistfully. ‘Me and my parents were talking about going there for a holiday next summer. Of course,’ she added wryly, ‘that was before my dad got arrested and my mum left him for a shipping magnate. I don’t suppose we’ll be going now.’

  Doria was once a fabled holiday destination on the far east coast of Gantua, with clear blue waters, white sandy beaches, amazing snorkel-ling, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and fish, and a deepwater harbour that made it perfect for cruise ships. The town had hotels and resorts, clubs and restaurants, markets and palaces and temples and shopping. The Flood had washed much of it away, but Gantua was so dependent on the money that came in from Doria’s tourist trade that it was rebuilt almost as splendidly as before. And while the dolphins and sea turtles were never seen these days, the beaches had been meticulously replaced with brand new sand brought in from elsewhere, new hotels and restaurants had gone up, and Doria was almost as lively a tourist destination as it had ever been.