by Geoff Rodkey
“Got any pickled rat?”
I must have looked like I was starving to death.
“Sir, this is a reputable establishment. We serve no rat.”
“What’s your bottom shelf?”
“Innards.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a mix. Brains, pancreas, bit of spleen—”
“Give us that.”
“Comes on a bun.”
“Skip the bun.”
The innards actually weren’t bad, although they would have tasted better if I hadn’t known what they were. I finished first, because my portion was smaller and I wasn’t much interested in chewing it, and spent a few minutes watching the crowd.
On the surface, they were like most of Sunrise Island’s permanent residents—Rovian looking, elaborately dressed, and clearly disgusted by us. But there were small differences. Their skin was paler, except for the ones whose faces and necks were red with sunburn. Their clothes—three-button coats, cravats, bustled skirts—were both more fancy and less appropriate for the weather than a Sunriser’s usual cotton and silk. They suffered for it in the midday heat, beads of sweat creeping down the men’s brows under their top hats, the women holding parasols and fanning themselves.
In spite of the heat, they all smelled unusually pleasant, like they’d rubbed themselves with lavender.
And the looks they gave us as we stood by the meat shack, my siblings and Percy still gnawing their food with both hands to their mouths, were as much confusion as anything, like they couldn’t figure out how we’d gotten there. They gave us a wide berth as they strolled past, heads turning slightly to keep us in their line of sight for a few extra feet, as if we were unpredictable wild animals that might lash out at any second.
A family of five passed us, the youngest son staring at me with saucer eyes, and I was about to bare my teeth at him just for fun when Dad’s voice made me jump.
“That’s done, then.”
Over Dad’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Archibald the lawyer running across the road, then vaulting up the steps of the Peacock Inn and disappearing inside.
“’Ave to wait a bit now.” Watching Adonis lick sauce from his fingers, Dad rubbed his mouth. “Could use a bite meself.”
He eyed the street meat vendor a moment, then turned away. “Let’s head to the Peacock.”
THE DINING ROOM of the Peacock Inn was as crowded with the new arrivals as Heavenly Road had been. Dad paused inside the door, and I think he would have gone back for street meat if a dozen heads hadn’t turned to stare at him. At that point, plunging forward was a matter of pride.
The sour-mouthed man who seated guests from a little standing desk at the dining room entrance did his best not to notice us, staring down at the desk like there was something absolutely fascinating on it, until the level of Dad’s voice threatened to stop all conversation in the room.
“S’cuse me… pardon…’Ey! Server!”
“May I help you?” As he grudgingly locked eyes with Dad, the middle of his face puckered like he’d just smelled something revolting. Which, to be fair, he probably had.
“Need a table. Spot o’ lunch.”
“Yes, well…” The sour man made a show of reviewing a page of scribbled names. “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re rather overbooked at the moment. What with the boat in, you know. Afraid you’d have to wait.”
“How long?”
“Perhaps Thursday.”
Dad’s head reared back, up and off his shoulders. It was a move that, if I were standing in front of him, would have meant an incoming fist.
“Ye know I’m a regular?”
The sour man’s blank look said, no, he was not aware of this.
“Savior’s Day and Resurrection Sunday. Regular as clockwork.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Take my business elsewhere if I’m not well served.”
“Certainly wouldn’t want that… There is one other option. For our favored guests.”
“Which is?”
“A private dining room. Just let me… yes! One’s available now. For a modest surcharge.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred.” The sour man’s mouth stayed frozen, but his eyes warmed with pleasure as Dad’s head sank back into his shoulders. Short of an explosion—unlikely but possible, because Dad’s fuse got short when he was hungry—the battle was over.
As Dad stewed over the least embarrassing way to exit the room, a door at the back of the hallway opened and a man stepped out. He was middle aged, handsome, and almost as tall as Dad. He walked in a way that immediately reminded me of a book I’d read about Lord Calverstop, the hero of the Battle of Olstom. It was the kind of confident swagger that could convince men to follow him off a cliff without so much as looking down.
As two other men—both older, fatter, and not nearly the type you’d follow off a cliff, even though one of them was in Rovian military dress—emerged behind him, he moved toward the exit, only to stop at the sight of Dad.
“Pardon my interruption, but… are you by any chance Hoke Masterson?”
“That’d be me.”
The handsome man smiled, showing a full set of teeth. “The agrarian wizard of Deadweather Island! My dear sir, it is an honor!” He said this so sincerely that Dad, in spite of his natural suspiciousness, was obliged to shake the man’s outstretched hand.
“Allow me to introduce myself. Roger Pembroke, local businessman. I’ve heard of your legend for years, and have long desired to meet the man who could build a thriving enterprise in such an unlikely environment. Truly, sir, I stand in awe of you.”
The sight of an apparently upstanding and well-respected Sunriser showering Dad with compliments stunned us all, Dad especially. As Dad’s mouth hung open in shock, Pembroke introduced his companions. The soldier was Colonel Something-or-other, and Pembroke referred to the second man as “Governor Burns,” making me briefly consider the dizzying possibility that the jowly, balding fellow shaking my father’s hand was the actual, king-appointed governor of Sunrise Island.
Both men left in a polite hurry, and when they were gone, Pembroke drilled back into Dad.
“I’d relish the opportunity to speak with you about your experience in business. Are you coming or going?”
“We was, ah… undecided.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Bit peckish, yeh.”
“Then please! Join me! As my guest. It would be an honor.” He turned to the server. “Honus, could you procure a private dining room for us? On my account, of course.”
The server gripped the side of his desk, like he was trying to avoid a sudden faint. “Right away, Mr. Pembroke.”
MILLICENT
An hour later, a white-shirted waiter was clearing the remains of the greatest meal I’d ever seen, made all the greater by the fact that I’d actually gotten to eat some of it.
Unclear on the ground rules for tormenting me in front of Roger Pembroke, Percy and my siblings had decided to ignore me and focus their attention on stuffing themselves sick with a massive second lunch of smoked pork, swordfish, bittersweet greens, and mashed potatoes soaked in butter and herb. By now, their bellies were so swollen that Adonis was staring slack-jawed into space, Venus’s eyes kept flitting shut, and Percy was quietly squirming as he tried to loosen his belt without anybody noticing.
Dad hadn’t so much as glanced at us since we’d taken our seats, his attention absorbed by Pembroke’s bottomless thirst for even the smallest details of the ugly fruit business. At first, Dad had limited himself to one-word grunts and the odd short sentence. But Pembroke was so charming, and he refilled Dad’s wine glass so eagerly, that Dad had been won over to the point where his answers ran to paragraphs, some of them containing more words than I’d normally hear him use in a week.
“Do you export to the Continent?”
“Nah, it’s all oranges with ’em—they’re ’orribly stuck up about it, like fer fruit to be worthy it needs
be pleasant to look at and sickly sweet. Plus in the forty days it takes crossin’ the Maw, ’alf the cargo rots.” Dad scowled. “Nah—most o’ my trade’s to the Fish Islands. That, and… well, ever since the war, they can’t get Barker oranges on the mainland… so I been runnin’ the occasional boat to Pella Nonna.”
Pembroke raised an eyebrow. “Trading with Cartagers—that’s politically adventurous.”
“Don’t care fer politics. I’m a businessman. And Cartager gold spends the same as Rovian silver…”
Dad droned on, but I stopped hearing anything just then, because the waiter had reappeared with a tray of sugar-glazed jelly bread still steaming from the oven. At the sight of it, Adonis snapped out of his daze, Venus gave an achy moan, and Percy dropped his chin and tried to force a belch that might clear enough room in his gut to cram in more food.
I sat bolt upright—since I started the meal still hungry, I not only had room for dessert, but this would be my first taste of jelly bread. In all our trips to Sunrise, I’d never once had any. Denying me jelly bread wasn’t official family policy or anything. It just always seemed to work out that way.
So when the waiter set the tray down in the middle of the table, I had to force myself to remember my manners and wait a polite second before reaching out for a piece.
Waiting turned out to be a terrible idea, because in that second Adonis slid the tray in his direction, leaving it just out of my reach.
As the greedy hands of Percy and my siblings tore through the bread, I made a second effort, stretching myself across the table so desperately that Dad noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced my way.
I quickly sank back into my seat. When Dad turned back to Pembroke, I locked eyes with Adonis.
Please, my eyes said. Just one piece.
Not in a million years, said Adonis’s eyes.
By the way, his eyes added, I’m enjoying this.
To take my mind off the disappointment, I forced myself to listen to Dad and Pembroke. Dad was leaning forward, his voice low and tentative.
“Say, ah… ye got any pull with them what provisions the silver mine?”
Pembroke smiled. “A bit. Why do you ask?”
“Just wonderin’ if them slaves ever get scurvy. In case o’ which—bit o’ ugly fruit in the diet might do ’em right.”
Pembroke’s smile disappeared—and when he spoke, his voice had gone suddenly cold and formal. “Sir, I assure you—the Natives in that mine are paid an honest wage. Slavery is an abomination and a crime—not just by the laws of King Frederick, but in the eyes of our Savior.”
He said it quietly, but with such a steely tone that Percy and my siblings all stopped chewing and turned to stare across the table. Everyone suddenly looked worried, Dad especially.
His eyes widened, and he had trouble keeping his words untangled. “Nah—course, it’s—weren’t—didn’t intend…”
Pembroke broke into a wide smile, sweeping away the tension with a pleasant wave of his hand.
“Not at all! It’s an understandable mistake. After all, it’s not exactly a plum appointment up there. But these Natives are quite grateful for the opportunity. And you’ve got to hand it to them, they’ve got some pluck, leaving the primitive comforts of their tribe to come here in search of a more civilized life. We do our best to give them that, along with honest pay for honest work… But it’s a very sage point you make about the ugly fruit.” Pembroke nodded solemnly. “I’ll see to it that it’s raised with the proper authority.”
“Be much obliged,” said Dad, practically sighing with relief.
“Not at all. My pleasure!”
There was a moment of silence that was just starting to feel awkward when Pembroke leaned in toward Dad with a twinkle in his eye and a little thrill in his voice.
“Know what I’d like to get your take on as a businessman? This tourism initiative. Think we’re on to something?”
Dad sat back, tapping his front teeth with a fingernail and trying to look thoughtful, even though I was pretty sure he had no idea what tourism was. “S’pose I’d need a bit more information.”
“Here’s the general idea: for years, every Rovian silver trader who’s dropped anchor here has gone batty for the place. Which I completely understand—I mean, Rovia, it’s the Motherland, much to be admired and all that—but do you realize what the climate’s like back there? Abysmal! Cold, wet, the sun never shines—there’s something to be said for the argument that we wouldn’t have overseas colonies in the first place if men of ambition hadn’t been desperate for some half-decent weather.
“And Sunrise, well, it’s… paradise. So a few of us got to thinking—maybe the island’s an asset in itself. Can’t exactly bottle it and sell it… but what if… given the average Rovian merchant’s got more money than places to spend it… I mean, how many half shares in Wartshire cattle farms can a man buy, really…? So what if… we could sell the experience of being here? Not permanently, ’cause that’d cause no end of problems. But temporarily?”
Pembroke paused. My father slowly nodded, doing a decent job of looking thoughtful.
“So we pooled our resources, commissioned the Earthly Pleasure—which we built from the timbers up as sort of a floating estate, pleasant to live in as a Pinceford castle—and sold tickets for a four-month journey here and back. Advertised it as a ‘Grand Tour of Sunrise.’ Which is how we took to calling it ‘tourism.’”
I glanced at Percy. His cheek bulged with the wiggling outline of his tongue as it searched his mouth for unchewed bits of jelly bread. If he’d been paying enough attention to know he’d just been proven ignorant, he didn’t show it.
“And they went for it?” asked Dad.
“Like lemmings! Booked to capacity, four hundred passengers. And among them, some VERY influential names. I daresay this will raise our stature at court. Which, frankly, is more than a little overdue—for all the silver this island’s put in the royal coffers, one might expect King Frederick to show a bit more appreciation of us… Still, I think that’ll be put right once the ship returns, especially since this bunch are so over the moon—apart from some minor gripes about sunburn. A few of them even swear they’ll be back next season! And we’ve practically sold out a second voyage already.”
“How much ye chargin’ a head?”
“Six thousand.”
Dad was aghast. “Madness!”
“Exactly. So what do you think? Have we got a winner?”
Dad was quiet for a moment, puzzling something out. “Just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“What ’appens when the pirates get wind? Boatload o’ rich Rovians is a fat prize.”
Pembroke smiled. “Let’s just say we’ve taken an excess of precaution in that department.”
Dad shrugged. “Hats off, then. Sounds like a winner.”
“You think so? So glad to hear it! Means a great deal to me to get the approval of a such a keen business mind as your own.”
Dad pressed his lips together, making an odd kind of grimace. It took me a second to realize he was trying not to smile.
Pembroke started to reach for the plate of jelly bread, only to find it stripped bare. I was about to blurt out that I hadn’t eaten any myself when he gave our end of the table a faintly amused look and turned back to Dad.
“Of course, to really make it pay, we need to get whole families on board—that way, instead of one ticket per customer, we sell five or six. Speaking as a family man—if you lived in Rovia, would you take your own children on such a voyage?”
Dad looked down the table, like he was surprised we were still there. Venus sat up straight, wiping jelly from her lip and trying to look sweet. Adonis smirked in his usual pleased-with-himself way.
“Some of ’em,” Dad said.
Pembroke took the comment as a joke. “There’s another thing I admire you for. Must be a real challenge, being a single father.”
Dad nodded. “Yeh. Hard goi
n’. Wife’s gone thirteen years to the day.”
I looked down at my hands. Pembroke’s voice went soft.
“I’m so sorry. How did she—?”
A knock at the door interrupted the question. Archibald the lawyer entered.
“Arch! Pleasant surprise. Have you met Hoke Masterson?”
Archibald nodded. “He’s a client. Actually.” He turned to Dad. “Sorry to interrupt…”
“Yeh, yeh.” Dad lumbered to his feet. He and Archibald disappeared into the hallway. A moment later, Dad came back alone.
“You use Archibald? Excellent choice. I do a bit of business with him myself.”
“Yeh. He’s not bad.” Dad turned to us. “Well, children, looks like we’ll be here till mornin’.”
After we all chirped with excitement, Pembroke asked, “Do you have accommodation on the island?”
“Reckoned we’d board at the Peacock.”
Pembroke looked almost offended. “Why, I wouldn’t hear of such a thing! You absolutely MUST stay the night in my home.”
DAD TRIED A FEW mild protests, all of which Pembroke waved off. Then he murmured some instructions to the waiter, and by the time we stepped out onto the Peacock’s crowded front porch, a large coach stood waiting for us, with four of the whitest horses I’d ever seen harnessed to it.
The uniformed driver opened the coach door, and Pembroke beckoned for us to climb in. As we walked over to it, I felt the bystanders staring at us, and for a second, I had the odd feeling of being in a fairy tale, like some poor scut-work orphan girl who’d been plucked from the crowd and turned into a princess. The feeling went away in a hurry when I put my foot on the coach step and remembered that Adonis had climbed in before me. I jerked my head down and to the side as I entered, but I didn’t have to worry—he was too busy gawking at the velvet inner walls to bother slugging me.
Pembroke sat in the coach with us, quietly enjoying the sight of us gaping at everything like awestruck monkeys. The ride was so smooth it was almost eerie—we glided down Heavenly Road with hardly a bump, and when we reached the bottom and turned up the unpaved shore road, I could barely feel the difference in grade.